Enchanters didn't charm until PoP dire charm AA

[starkind]

because it basically sucked

i played live from 1999 to 2005

i was crazy its the only thing i did

i know

charm should last 30 seconds at best most of the time even at 255 charisma until pop

[Hotel]

we'll be sure to get this info straight to the top

[starkind]

it might have been luclin, but the first time i met an enchanter charming regularly was on bot and in plane of storms on the frogs

then in LDON

otherwise it really wasn't a think, except at low lvl in kunark in grps and the charms never lasted more than 2 pulls.

[loramin]

https://i.imgur.com/IKMXExz.gif

[starkind]

ya and the charms were agro kites lol

[Pulgasari]

https://i.imgur.com/IKMXExz.gif

[starkind]

need video evedince of enchanters chain charming solo to prove it beyond a doubt imo otherwise it's fake evidence

[Jimjam]

it might have been luclin, but the first time i met an enchanter charming regularly was on bot and in plane of storms on the frogs

then in LDON

otherwise it really wasn't a think, except at low lvl in kunark in grps and the charms never lasted more than 2 pulls.

Plane of Innovation too on the lil mechs

[ruzzil]

because it basically sucked

i played live from 1999 to 2005

i was crazy its the only thing i did

i know

charm should last 30 seconds at best most of the time even at 255 charisma until pop

I agree... and the interruption mechanics on p99 are way off making it even easier... you can land stuff while getting smashed by a mob very easily on 99.... that never happened on live.... I couldn’t even get a root off if i was being hit back then

[Horza]

https://i.imgur.com/IKMXExz.gif

[starkind]

if charm resisted more intitially and on re-charm even with tash so it took 2-3 casts like a base 100 MR penalty to charm i'd feel better even tho its not coded on the live spell data, it probaly was hardcoded in the client or back end server side for a base 50% chance resist lol on initial charm (not charm break)

[Delekhan]

It's true charm was not a thing in era. That said, it should have been and I consider the current setup to be more appropriate.

[starkind]

It's true charm was not a thing in era. That said, it should have been and I consider the current setup to be more appropriate.

if charm resisted more intitially and on re-charm even with tash so it took 2-3 casts like a base 100 MR penalty to charm i'd feel better even tho its not coded on the live spell data, it probaly was hardcoded in the client or back end server side for a base 50% chance resist lol on initial charm (not charm break)

brad would have wanted it this way

[starkind]

it probably had a 50% hardcoded resist chance in the client cuz thats how they did things

[Fammaden]

I never saw a bard swarm until PoP either, but I chalk it up to so many people being on broadband with shitty computers playing on inconsistent unreliable game servers as much as anything. Everyone was too risk averse to try high risk/high reward strategies rather than go the safe and slower ways.

[starkind]

Yeah or either overlvld and overgeared by an expansion. Then strats like this came into play.

First time I saw druids n bards kiting WW was @ 65 FWiW.

[Jibartik]

I played enchanter to level 12 on rallos zek, anc can confirm that you could charm a person long enough for him to kill his whole group, or his group to kill him, before they nerfed charm in PVP.

So if it worked for that I bet it worked pretty good PVE

[starkind]

I played enchanter to level 12 on rallos zek, anc can confirm that you could charm a person long enough for him to kill his whole group, or his group to kill him, before they nerfed charm in PVP.

So if it worked for that I bet it worked pretty good PVE

And no fungi twinked halfling warriors appeared to pell ur charm n shield bash ur gates.

Hard 2 believe.

[Pulgasari]

I played enchanter to level 12 on rallos zek, anc can confirm that you could charm a person long enough for him to kill his whole group, or his group to kill him, before they nerfed charm in PVP.

So if it worked for that I bet it worked pretty good PVE

I do think the zeks had the highest concentration of high-G skilla gameplay

[starkind]

I do think the zeks had the highest concentration of high-G skilla gameplay

https://i.imgur.com/M6SAnVZ.gif
https://gifer.com/en/OOmF

[RecondoJoe]

I vividly remember charm being too unreliable to use, and people raging at enchanters for trying to use it in our groups. This is also why everyone fawned over the Magician pet. Nothing came close to it... P99 is not classic at all when it comes to charm...

[Bardp1999]

People also leveled slow as shit in 1999 because they didnt know where to go...and honestly charming is not great (even on P99) until higher levels. Charm breaks at a much greater rate pre 50 in my experience.

[cd288]

This is a terrible rnf

[cd288]

I vividly remember charm being too unreliable to use, and people raging at enchanters for trying to use it in our groups. This is also why everyone fawned over the Magician pet. Nothing came close to it... P99 is not classic at all when it comes to charm...

Thanks for sharing your opinion, very interesting, keep talking

[RecondoJoe]

People also leveled slow as shit in 1999 because they didnt know where to go...and honestly charming is not great (even on P99) until higher levels. Charm breaks at a much greater rate pre 50 in my experience.

the average person playing everquest in 1999 had a full time job or was a student

the average person playing p99 is completely unemployed

the people i played with, on average, 20 years ago... were much higher caliber, and much more competitive than the kids on P99. On P99 it's assumed that if you dont have mez then you cant do dungeons. I didn't even know what mez was until I was level 55. We made that shit happen one way or another. There was no GMs baby sitting, if someone out-pulled you, your group simply went without. It was a very competitive game by comparison. There was no AFKing half the time while your group carried you.

Also ZEMs make people level way, way, way faster than they are supposed to. As someone who has played on TLP for a little over a week now I can tell you that the ZEMs on P99 are literally game breaking. Makes the game super unfun by forcing players to level in the 3 most boring zones over and over again, but is also ridiculously fast, even by TLP standards, which were intentionally tweaked for casuals.

Leveling 30-45 in a single day of CT and just thinking its because you got better at the game than players 20 years ago is a huge LOL. If you traveled back in time 20 years ago expecting to get similar exp rates then lol. Literally.

My hat goes off to the OGs to hit level 50. There's a reason characters were selling for $5K on ebay. It was no small undertaking, and to try and discredit how hardcore players were 20 years ago is LOL and you are literally rewriting history.

[Bhairava]

This is a terrible rnf

better than the threads full of the mentally deficient arguing about blue raid dwama

[Diogene]

the people i played with, on average, 20 years ago... were much higher caliber, and much more competitive than the kids on P99. On P99 it's assumed that if you dont have mez then you cant do dungeons. I didn't even know what mez was until I was level 55. We made that shit happen one way or another. There was no GMs baby sitting, if someone out-pulled you, your group simply went without. It was a very competitive game by comparison. There was no AFKing half the time while your group carried you.
.

This sounds about right. I dont understand how people don’t die out of boredom grinding shit in ZEM zones with their cleric tank ench rog rog rog groups. I usually enjoy ALOT more suboptimal groups coz they are more fun and challenging. I rarely see them tho. Everything on p99 has to be minmax and super smooth and super optimal and its really killing the vibe.

[Izmael]

Please post video proof that enchanters didn't charm before PoP.
Thanks!

[Izmael]

(Also first AoW kill ever was done with a massive use of charmed pets, and that was before Luclin, you're welcome).

[Jimjam]

Please post video proof that enchanters didn't charm before PoP.
Thanks!

pMiyJR_iTvY

[starkind]

(Also first AoW kill ever was done with a massive use of charmed pets, and that was before Luclin, you're welcome).

Reverse charming suicide tactics tho in a raid environment where the pets where poofed by AoW in under 30 seconds... and chanters were rezzed... a lot probably... Also doubt that this happened regularly in hate/fear.

[starkind]

the average person playing everquest in 1999 had a full time job or was a student

the average person playing p99 is completely unemployed

the people i played with, on average, 20 years ago... were much higher caliber, and much more competitive than the kids on P99. On P99 it's assumed that if you dont have mez then you cant do dungeons. I didn't even know what mez was until I was level 55. We made that shit happen one way or another. There was no GMs baby sitting, if someone out-pulled you, your group simply went without. It was a very competitive game by comparison. There was no AFKing half the time while your group carried you.

Also ZEMs make people level way, way, way faster than they are supposed to. As someone who has played on TLP for a little over a week now I can tell you that the ZEMs on P99 are literally game breaking. Makes the game super unfun by forcing players to level in the 3 most boring zones over and over again, but is also ridiculously fast, even by TLP standards, which were intentionally tweaked for casuals.

Leveling 30-45 in a single day of CT and just thinking its because you got better at the game than players 20 years ago is a huge LOL. If you traveled back in time 20 years ago expecting to get similar exp rates then lol. Literally.

My hat goes off to the OGs to hit level 50. There's a reason characters were selling for $5K on ebay. It was no small undertaking, and to try and discredit how hardcore players were 20 years ago is LOL and you are literally rewriting history.

This sounds about right. I dont understand how people don’t die out of boredom grinding shit in ZEM zones with their cleric tank ench rog rog rog groups. I usually enjoy ALOT more suboptimal groups coz they are more fun and challenging. I rarely see them tho. Everything on p99 has to be minmax and super smooth and super optimal and its really killing the vibe.

100%

[Nirgon]

Avatar of War was killed initially because Kael Giants could be reliably charmed

Nother degenerate attempt to ruin EQ

[whydothis]

https://thesafehouse.org/forums/forum/everquest-wing/library-read-only/2968-book-of-knowledge-guide-to-the-plane-of-hate
From 2000, dude talks about enchanters charming in hate. Enchanters have always charmed in eq.

[Snortles Chortles]

Avatar of War was killed initially because Kael Giants could be reliably charmed

Nother degenerate attempt to ruin EQ

[Gustoo]

I played enchanter to level 12 on rallos zek, anc can confirm that you could charm a person long enough for him to kill his whole group, or his group to kill him, before they nerfed charm in PVP.

So if it worked for that I bet it worked pretty good PVE

And no fungi twinked halfling warriors appeared to pell ur charm n shield bash ur gates.

Hard 2 believe.

Player charming was for less than a year along with player fearing. Glorious times no doubt I only played the tail end of watching people fleeing off kelethin like lunatics. The fear was less of a problem because evil classes were so uncommon (being disgusting evil bastards)

[loramin]

https://thesafehouse.org/forums/forum/everquest-wing/library-read-only/2968-book-of-knowledge-guide-to-the-plane-of-hate
From 2000, dude talks about enchanters charming in hate. Enchanters have always charmed in eq.

No one is saying "Enchanters never charmed in classic." Obviously they had the spell, and some did use it some of the time. But what everyone who played in classic knows is that charming here isn't like it was on live: it is vastly more common here.

Instead of a few brave Enchanters using risky techniques on dangerous raids ... with multiple healers around to keep them alive (ie. Classic) ... we have a huge percentage of Enchanters here soloing their way to 60, and then soloing great loot camps, with virtually zero risk (ie. not Classic). And we also have Druids, who were were root/rot and quad soloers on live, charming here because it's the most efficient XP method (again, not Classic).

And there is lots of evidence to back this up! I'm not talking obscure news group posts, I'm talking literally "one click away from the front page of Caster's Realm". What we don't have is any evidence that charm was as easy, safe, and powerful back in Classic ... because no such evidence exists.

[Izmael]

- Nobody did /who all dial and get a port in 30 seconds, yet the port code is the same here
- Nobody was swarming naked to 60, yet the swarm code is the same (ish) here

List could go on.

Unless you find a way to force people to unlearn what they now know, you will not go back to 2000 gameplay.

Power players teamed up and took down AoW with charmed pets in 2001. Power players use charmed pets to duo or solo level 45 mobs in HS for exp in 2021, big deal.

[beargryllz]

because it basically sucked

i played live from 1999 to 2005

i was crazy its the only thing i did

i know

charm should last 30 seconds at best most of the time even at 255 charisma until pop

Every single enchanter you knew was terrible

[Snortles Chortles]

didn't have volunteer elf janitors on live either

[HalflingSpergand]

Not as many full blown no lifers/ disabled (fat)/ unemployed(lazy) back in them days either

[Tunabros]

https://i.imgur.com/IKMXExz.gif

[Pulgasari]

Every single enchanter you knew was terrible

Yes! Terrible is classic!

[Jibartik]

pMiyJR_iTvY

This is proof that wizards and necromancers could tank as well as warriors

[starkind]

https://i.imgur.com/7VjfzJK.png

[Nocht]

Ah the good ol days when the expansion came with the full version of the base game. Good luck finding that in modern gaming.

[Hotel]

Ah the good ol days when the expansion came with the full version of the base game. Good luck finding that in modern gaming.

now we just have games like path of exile where everything is free

future sucks

[RecondoJoe]

Every single enchanter you knew was terrible

Nope, was the other way around. Remember having a single enchanter keeping 30 mobs in PoH simultaneously mezzed day in and day out.

It’s simple math, really. Why do larger schools football teams destroy smaller schools football teams?

When you had millions of people playing this game and COMPETING against one another, you end up with the best players in the world at the very top. You will never convince me that the top 5% of 2 million players who played this game during their prime, in an era where getting outperformed simply meant you lost are suddenly inferior to a bunch of disabled and unemployed grandpas playing the game 20 years later.

When I played a monk or rogue groups didn’t just invite you because they had a spot, there was usually 5-6 other monks/rogues looking for a group. I was notorious for stealing other groups pulls, which was legal. I pissed a lot of people off by doing this, and ironically one of the guys who cursed me out later asked me to join his group and even told his group that he thought I was an asshole, but he knew if I was in the group we would at least get plenty of mobs and that the other groups were being aggressive towards them. I was the type of rogue to literally follow you back to your group if you stole my pull and KS the mob from your entire group, and epic rogues could easily do this at the time.

The game was super aggressive and competitive and when you have millions of young, hardcore gamers you end up with the best players in the world at the very top. P99 community is far from the cream of the crop, and the best players wouldnt survive in real Everquest. They have a nervous meltdown over getting killed because they AFK at zone lines and die to trains.

[Nocht]

now we just have games like path of exile where everything is free

future sucks

Sure its free but all the nice stuff is locked behind the shop. Hope you enjoy looking like a turd in game after farming for 1,000 hours in your free game.

There are so many of them too! I mean you got PoE, and .....

[Hotel]

Sure its free but all the nice stuff is locked behind the shop. Hope you enjoy looking like a turd in game after farming for 1,000 hours in your free game.

There are so many of them too! I mean you got PoE, and .....

... league of legends???

lose the edge and lift some weights

[mycoolrausch]

The charm spells have long durations, if they wanted short duration charms why didn't they make the spells short duration?

Charm is pretty unreliable if you're not charming the right level mobs and type, and pretty risky if you're not handling charm breaks with quick GCDs stuns/mez/recharm/whatever. All the subtle game mechanics, and 20 years of gaming muscle memory we take for granted etc.

I mean classic is broken. A level 60 shaman is like designed by a 8 year old playing superhero. What if I get the power to have all the powers?

[Nocht]

... league of legends???

lose the edge and lift some weights

But I dont wanna I just got back from my daily walk. I will try harder at containing my snark, my apologies.

[7thGate]

Well, on one hand, matches my memory; I think I tried charming once, had it fail miserably and delete a few hours of progress, then stuck to my summoned pet.

On the other hand, very high chance it is because I didn't know what I was doing. Definitely wasn't using the Color Flux line, and probably tried charming Dark Blues without any support or a plan on what to do if it broke other than try and mez both the things.

[starkind]

GCD clickies were an exploit confirmed they theatened to ban players for it )

[starkind]

Nope, was the other way around. Remember having a single enchanter keeping 30 mobs in PoH simultaneously mezzed day in and day out.

It’s simple math, really. Why do larger schools football teams destroy smaller schools football teams?

When you had millions of people playing this game and COMPETING against one another, you end up with the best players in the world at the very top. You will never convince me that the top 5% of 2 million players who played this game during their prime, in an era where getting outperformed simply meant you lost are suddenly inferior to a bunch of disabled and unemployed grandpas playing the game 20 years later.

When I played a monk or rogue groups didn’t just invite you because they had a spot, there was usually 5-6 other monks/rogues looking for a group. I was notorious for stealing other groups pulls, which was legal. I pissed a lot of people off by doing this, and ironically one of the guys who cursed me out later asked me to join his group and even told his group that he thought I was an asshole, but he knew if I was in the group we would at least get plenty of mobs and that the other groups were being aggressive towards them. I was the type of rogue to literally follow you back to your group if you stole my pull and KS the mob from your entire group, and epic rogues could easily do this at the time.

The game was super aggressive and competitive and when you have millions of young, hardcore gamers you end up with the best players in the world at the very top. P99 community is far from the cream of the crop, and the best players wouldnt survive in real Everquest. They have a nervous meltdown over getting killed because they AFK at zone lines and die to trains.
by this logic the chinese should be the best at sports, they are not

[RecondoJoe]

by this logic the chinese should be the best at sports, they are not

Not a good example. The average man in China is 5'5". The average American height is closer to 5'9". Not to mention that the Olympics mostly revolve around Westernized sports. I think even you would agree that there are significantly less Chinese citizens regularly practicing American Basketball, American wrestling, American Baseball, Shooting etc.

Just like there are significantly less Americans participating in competitive League of Legends or Overwatch, and thus, Americans get destroyed in these events as a result.

I used football specifically because it's a more narrow spectrum. Do you really think the reason large schools dominate small schools consistently throughout the entire nation is just a coincidence? Somehow bringing the olympics in as an analogy is just silly and weird. Especially when it involves mostly American sports that aren't even popular in Asia, and that greatly benefit taller players, something Asians are lacking.

Always felt that way about sports too, and that's why scholarships for sports are immoral. A black kid deserves to go to college because he was born tall, but not if he was born short. Where is the logic here? It's old and antiquated.

And yes, the top EQ players of 2001 are leagues above the top EQ players on P99. It's a weird comparison. As someone who played WoW 17 years ago and WoW today, despite putting siginificantly less effort into the game in 2020, I got gear I only dreamed of getting 17 years ago. And it's not because I got better at the game. I put so much more effort in 17 years ago and it showed.

You're delusional, old man.

[k9quaint]

I charmed killed in Luclin expansion, outdoors, without AAs.
OP is dum.

Charming is much easier on P99 tho.

[bwe]

This will end like every enchanter thread where enchanters say that everyone in classic was brain damaged and could only press auto attack

[mycoolrausch]

This will end like every enchanter thread where enchanters say that everyone in classic was brain damaged and could only press auto attack

I know more math than descartes

knowledge is power

[nyclin]

my enchanter on vz was bound outside seb for quite a while and i'd regularly charm solo my naked ass down to abc or disco while waiting on a rez

this was during kunark

hope this helps

[beargryllz]

Well, on one hand, matches my memory; I think I tried charming once, had it fail miserably and delete a few hours of progress, then stuck to my summoned pet.

On the other hand, very high chance it is because I didn't know what I was doing. Definitely wasn't using the Color Flux line, and probably tried charming Dark Blues without any support or a plan on what to do if it broke other than try and mez both the things.

This is pretty much it

On actual '00 EQ I had a compulsion to only fight the darkest of dark blues that gave the biggest dopamine hits of tiny blue pixelated progress on my XP bar

Nowadays I kill and loot 10x faster and still level faster because I'm not solely trying to kill lvl 30 mobs as a lvl 31 character

Anyone can watch an enchanter stream and learn 10 new tricks in 5 minutes that very few people in '00 would ever know existed

Information Age is glorious

[Snortles Chortles]

i had no idea about necro mez until someone told me
no way i would have thought to do that on charm breaks lol
maybe thats the beauty of the game

[Delekhan]

I'm sorry but to say people didn't know how to play the class in Era is a load of crap.

[Nirgon]

Lazy degenerates who can't maintain a charmed pet

[loramin]

I'm sorry but to say people didn't know how to play the class in Era is a load of crap.

[loramin]

It’s simple math, really. Why do larger schools football teams destroy smaller schools football teams?

When you had millions of people playing this game and COMPETING against one another, you end up with the best players in the world at the very top. You will never convince me that the top 5% of 2 million players who played this game during their prime, in an era where getting outperformed simply meant you lost are suddenly inferior to a bunch of disabled and unemployed grandpas playing the game 20 years later.

[RecondoJoe]

This is pretty much it

On actual '00 EQ I had a compulsion to only fight the darkest of dark blues that gave the biggest dopamine hits of tiny blue pixelated progress on my XP bar

Nowadays I kill and loot 10x faster and still level faster because I'm not solely trying to kill lvl 30 mobs as a lvl 31 character

Anyone can watch an enchanter stream and learn 10 new tricks in 5 minutes that very few people in '00 would ever know existed

Information Age is gloriousfake news as hell. I’ve never seen the skill level of some of the top enchanters replicated on p99. Even the enchanter I duo’d all the way to 50 with when green was new felt mechanically bad and he even he would tell you that. Yet he effortlessly breezed through the game because of how op charm on p99 is.

I do remember some of the best enchanters in the entire game doing cool stuff with charm that most people thought was amazing, but it wasn’t consistent or reliable and was no small feat at the time. I remember witnessing some of this and how tense it was.

I also vividly remember that the enchanters who used charm almost always had to let the mob die ASAP because once charm broke you would NOT be able to re charm the same mob. I think this was by design and for balance. It was not normal to keep the same pet for hours.

I also vividly remember an enchanter using charm in our group, and being chaotic neutral it made me lol. I knew I wouldn’t be the person to die when charm broke, so I didn’t care. Our tank/pulled raised absolute hell when he saw that our enchanter had charmed a drolvarg inside of KC. But again, I was chaotic neutral and I was like wow this is fun and the dps is crazy, I don’t care that our enc and cleric are about to die! Enchanter assures tank it’s safe. Tank goes to pull, charm breaks, enc and cleric both die while I run to the zone. Tank dies because he pulls several mobs to discover his group is wiped. I laugh the entire time.

I vividly remember this. Groups did NOT use charmed mobs for a reason.

[starkind]

fake news as hell. I’ve never seen the skill level of some of the top enchanters replicated on p99. Even the enchanter I duo’d all the way to 50 with when green was new felt mechanically bad and he even he would tell you that. Yet he effortlessly breezed through the game because of how op charm on p99 is.

I do remember some of the best enchanters in the entire game doing cool stuff with charm that most people thought was amazing, but it wasn’t consistent or reliable and was no small feat at the time. I remember witnessing some of this and how tense it was.

I also vividly remember that the enchanters who used charm almost always had to let the mob die ASAP because once charm broke you would NOT be able to re charm the same mob. I think this was by design and for balance. It was not normal to keep the same pet for hours.

I also vividly remember an enchanter using charm in our group, and being chaotic neutral it made me lol. I knew I wouldn’t be the person to die when charm broke, so I didn’t care. Our tank/pulled raised absolute hell when he saw that our enchanter had charmed a drolvarg inside of KC. But again, I was chaotic neutral and I was like wow this is fun and the dps is crazy, I don’t care that our enc and cleric are about to die! Enchanter assures tank it’s safe. Tank goes to pull, charm breaks, enc and cleric both die while I run to the zone. Tank dies because he pulls several mobs to discover his group is wiped. I laugh the entire time.

I vividly remember this. Groups did NOT use charmed mobs for a reason.
seems correct

[azxten]

Yes, Enchanter is extremely overpowered and in no way classic.

Yes, the evidence has been provided for years now.

No, the staff doesn't seem to care how Enchanter ruins most of the games difficulty.

Here is the simple guide to fixing Enchanter and most of P99's difficulty curve which is currently way too easy:

1. Fix channeling. Channeling success on P99 is insanely high compared to live. On the order of something like 10% success chance at level 1 for live but it's around 70% success chance at level 1 on P99. Go make a level 1 and test it. It's insanely obvious that it is broken and not classic. This plays hugely into Enchanter being easy here no matter what lies people try to tell about Enchanters having stun which makes them immune to needing to channel. It would also fix every other caster class being able to channel too easily and would promote grouping for dungeon content which should be more difficult to solo due to chance of interrupts.

2. Nerf item recharging in some way. Regardless of the classic nature of item recharging it is used to trivialize raid content. Many other things on P99 are nerfed that were allowed on live because it is overpowered due to too many people knowing about and using it.

3. Normalize all mob HP values to stop the easy leveling treadmills that seem to keep popping up. Kith undead mobs with too low HP compared to live and the same with the Ogre guards which were just patched. Anytime one of these unclassic things pops up it needs to be instantly nerfed, no delay for patch day, etc. It should be actively monitored for by calculating rate of exp gain across all players to determine if someone has found a bug and is abusing it.

4. Stop using ZEMs that aren't classic. It was shown current "hot zone" ZEMs on P99 didn't exist in classic and they're almost a 2x exp rate compared to live. They allow ridiculously fast leveling and encourage "the one camp to rule them all" in certain level ranges. Like The Hole is now. I complained about this endlessly with HHK and similar and the devs just moved the ZEMs around. That wasn't the problem. The problem is the ZEMs are too high. We don't need "hot zones", they're unclassic and destroy the difficulty curve and time sink required to hit max level.

Make these 4 changes and P99 will be a million times more classic in terms of your average play experience. More pick up groups. More difficult raids. No Enchanters carrying all content. A difficult game where the majority of players will never make it to max level between classic/kunark/velious which relieves the pressure on raid content seen here.

Seems pretty simple to me. Whatever. Last time I made that thread about Enchanter and provided tons of evidence I had to put up with being called names and insulted for 50 pages and then when I finally "took the bait" and called someone names back I was banned from forums.

Pretty obvious you should all just shut the fuck up about Enchanter. The staff doesn't care and prefers their unclassic leveling treadmill congested raid content trivialized server for whatever reason. It's theirs after all.

[Jibartik]

Threads getting sad fast.

[azxten]

I'm sorry but to say people didn't know how to play the class in Era is a load of crap.

Yes, this is provably false but a favorite distraction of the Enchanter defenders. There are tons of 1999 posts about people knowing exactly how to play Enchanter. They knew about CHA, mez to break, all the same stuff. The problem was it just didn't work like it does here. It was buggy, channeling was difficult, etc.

All of this is already proven. Evidence provided. Staff doesn't care. It's a moot point. Channeling on P99 is so ridiculously stupidly broken but the staff won't even say a peep about the evidence on this. Makes literally everything in this game 10x easier than it should be on P99.

[Snortles Chortles]

Everquest Arcade 1999

[Sadre]

https://i.imgur.com/IKMXExz.gif

[RecondoJoe]

I also don't think Monks were as tanky 20 years ago. Now keep in mind I mained a Monk named Zerazia, and a Rogue named Tajin... at no point did I ever feel like my Monk was a tank.. I could kind of tank on my monk... but I could also kind of tank on my Rogue by this same standard...

When I hit 50s the reason I chose to play my Rogue over my Monk was that they were both essentially melee DPS, but my Rogue did WAY MORE Dps than my monk... again I didn't consider my monk to be a tank... no one did really..

flash forward 20 years later and I come to p99 and Bebquix basically tanked for my cleric from level 8 all the way to level 50... like man I really dont remember monks being this tanky.. and my monk had pretty much BIS everything and was a super twink.. froglok crown, gator scale leggings, granite bracers, treant fists etc. the whole nine yards. Bebquix was running around in cloth armor tanking the fuck out of shit and I don't remember monks being that gangster, I really don't.

[RecondoJoe]

i just googled this, apparently i aint the only one who noticed this (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38376)

like had a monk, had a rogue.. neither could tank, rogue did more dps

mained rogue

[Delekhan]

fake news as hell. I’ve never seen the skill level of some of the top enchanters replicated on p99. Even the enchanter I duo’d all the way to 50 with when green was new felt mechanically bad and he even he would tell you that. Yet he effortlessly breezed through the game because of how op charm on p99 is.

I do remember some of the best enchanters in the entire game doing cool stuff with charm that most people thought was amazing, but it wasn’t consistent or reliable and was no small feat at the time. I remember witnessing some of this and how tense it was.

I also vividly remember that the enchanters who used charm almost always had to let the mob die ASAP because once charm broke you would NOT be able to re charm the same mob. I think this was by design and for balance. It was not normal to keep the same pet for hours.

I also vividly remember an enchanter using charm in our group, and being chaotic neutral it made me lol. I knew I wouldn’t be the person to die when charm broke, so I didn’t care. Our tank/pulled raised absolute hell when he saw that our enchanter had charmed a drolvarg inside of KC. But again, I was chaotic neutral and I was like wow this is fun and the dps is crazy, I don’t care that our enc and cleric are about to die! Enchanter assures tank it’s safe. Tank goes to pull, charm breaks, enc and cleric both die while I run to the zone. Tank dies because he pulls several mobs to discover his group is wiped. I laugh the entire time.

I vividly remember this. Groups did NOT use charmed mobs for a reason.


100% on point. This is how classic eq was.

[starkind]

Yep nerf monks, nerf chanters. Gg.

[cd288]

Yes, this is provably false but a favorite distraction of the Enchanter defenders. There are tons of 1999 posts about people knowing exactly how to play Enchanter. They knew about CHA, mez to break, all the same stuff. The problem was it just didn't work like it does here. It was buggy, channeling was difficult, etc.

All of this is already proven. Evidence provided. Staff doesn't care. It's a moot point. Channeling on P99 is so ridiculously stupidly broken but the staff won't even say a peep about the evidence on this. Makes literally everything in this game 10x easier than it should be on P99.

The only actual evidence that has been provided is about channeling. The other “evidence” are random player posts from 20+ years ago that are contradicted by other player posts and guides (including one in era player written guide that calls Charm the most powerful spell enchanters have and details how to charm solo). Honestly the biggest difference is simply technology; the game was very laggy unless you had a great computer (which most people didnt) and Internet disconnects were extremely frequent (btw the latter helped to influence the “camping” meta that arose because groups didn’t want to move through a dungeon and have people go LD).

Btw where’s that treatise you told all of us you were writing with actual evidence that was gonna prove how charm isn’t classic? Lol loser

[Jimjam]

Yep nerf monks, nerf chanters. Gg.

Mob attack values are too low. Or maybe the by level worn AC caps are too high. Either way, they should be rolling higher damage against silk tier armour. It's been far too easy to mitigate damage on my 'soft' alts.

I know the staff adjusted the AC system previously - and that was a good step - but it still doesn't feel quite right.

[starkind]

The only actual evidence that has been provided is about channeling. The other “evidence” are random player posts from 20+ years ago that are contradicted by other player posts and guides (including one in era player written guide that calls Charm the most powerful spell enchanters have and details how to charm solo). Honestly the biggest difference is simply technology; the game was very laggy unless you had a great computer (which most people didnt) and Internet disconnects were extremely frequent (btw the latter helped to influence the “camping” meta that arose because groups didn’t want to move through a dungeon and have people go LD).

Btw where’s that treatise you told all of us you were writing with actual evidence that was gonna prove how charm isn’t classic? Lol loser

99% of us know what random posts were accurate and don't care how easy the game is. So we know it was harder and that it took full groups to reliably do anything outside of killing greens in the open sky world.

Mob attack values are too low. Or maybe the by level worn AC caps are too high. Either way, they should be rolling higher damage against silk tier armour. It's been far too easy to mitigate damage on my 'soft' alts.

I know the staff adjusted the AC system previously - and that was a good step - but it still doesn't feel quite right.

Yeah, my wizard couldn't tank anything higher than lvl 20 on live even with twink ac and agi.

It was definitely a step in the right direction.

Don't forget melee survivability came a lot from dodge, block, parry, riposte. Those skills are all renormalized towards pop progression.

Rogues should be getting hit harder and have the potential to dodge, post, parry 6 attacks in a row and get a bind wound off, it was a tricky feat, but seen it done in VANILLA, first hand at lvl 35 is. Probably 34. Vs aviaks, it was a big brag with screenshots and everything.

Mobs should hit for max/ high dmg way more and land hits way more often, and dodge, parry, riposte should come into play with way more.

Making it really hard to survive a lvl 40 mob agro on clothies. That and certain mobs should have higher mr.

Fast cast root at high lvl 1.5 seconds vs the standard 2.0 seconds exists for a reason.

[starkind]

I pretty much remember having to strafe run and maybe get a lucky dodge to reroot reliably out of doors was way more popular. Or keep mobs at max distance, and reroot after back peddling, verant had root nuking very highly tuned so that dark blues could sometimes getchu, especially with a bit of lag and a resist. Which was way more common.

[indiscriminate_hater]

feels over reals

[Snortles ban appeal]

root nuke def consistently broke as a live wiz

[RecondoJoe]

I notice the root thing too

I think Snare / DoT was way more common, particularly for druids

[loramin]

I notice the root thing too

I think Snare / DoT was way more common, particularly for druids

Well, in the early days snared/DoTed mobs didn't lose 33.3% of their DoT's damage, so snaring + DoTing was the best way to level as a Druid ... because the rules worked differently.

But that stopped in '99 https://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes#September_13.2C_1999 (and, seeing as how it was in the patch notes, pretty much every Druid knew about the change instantly). From that point on root/rot became the de facto Druid soloing technique, with quadding and charming being risky but potentially more lucrative approaches.

But again ... if it was as easy to charm on live as it was here, basic logic dictates a hell of a lot more Druids would have charmed ... instead of it what everyone remembers it being on live: a relatively niche, high risk technique.

[Clazxiss]

Even though I've been out of the game for a year, I couldn't resist responding to this thread. First and foremost, I believe enchanters are functioning as they truly were intended to function. The enchanter was my main character for the entire time I played live. Was charm unreliable, even with high charisma? Yes. Were there "creative" ways to work around this issue, yes. But ask yourselves this question about the charm spells, was it a true intention from the Verant team for them to be innately unreliable? I suspect this was not the case!

Thanks to the efforts of Nilbog, Rogean, and the P99 crew, I feel this version of EQ is a more balanced game than what live was in terms of spell behavior. Even the lull line of spells can be dependable, which they weren't on live. And why this is, I have my suspicions, but I'll say one name, Absor.

This is a man who was supposed to be the liaison between Verant and the community. Below is an except from a thread about the nasty enchanter charm nerf during PoP. It details how he supposedly came to the conclusion of what the charm nerf should.

Poster: Cantatus
"And then despite all the rants on our boards about Sony completing ignoring other concerns of ours while continually bashing us with the nerfbat as if we were in a game of Whack-A-Mole the Charm nerf was handled the exact same way. Did the pleading of them discussing the changes with us like they did in the case of Manaburn to Wizards and mitigation changes to Monks gain us the same curtousy? No. All we got was Absor telling us that they had been working closely with 5 Enchanters on Test to ensure the CoD changes weren't too horrible. Apparently those 5 Enchanters speak the gospel truth despite the fact that not only tons of Enchanters think the nerf was overdone but also several other classes."

Original thread here: https://thedruidsgrove.org/archive/eq/t-628.html

So that might be it. 5 Enchanters who play on the test server may have decided what the nerf would be for the rest of the population. That is textbook asinine by today's standards of MMORPG testing. Absor is the same man that argued "druids are fine" as they dominated each expansion in terms of solo ability while also being able to offer group utility. I suspect the coding for enchanter charm was gimped from launch on live and no one on the Verant team took the time to correct it. Couple that with Absor's ability to turn cheek on non druid classes and you have the reason why charm was unreliable.

I'm keeping my tin foil hat on for this. I believe I'm right!

[starkind]

Even though I've been out of the game for a year, I couldn't resist responding to this thread. First and foremost, I believe enchanters are functioning as they truly were intended to function. The enchanter was my main character for the entire time I played live. Was charm unreliable, even with high charisma? Yes. Were there "creative" ways to work around this issue, yes. But ask yourselves this question about the charm spells, was it a true intention from the Verant team for them to be innately unreliable? I suspect this was not the case!

Thanks to the efforts of Nilbog, Rogean, and the P99 crew, I feel this version of EQ is a more balanced game than what live was in terms of spell behavior. Even the lull line of spells can be dependable, which they weren't on live. And why this is, I have my suspicions, but I'll say one name, Absor.

This is a man who was supposed to be the liaison between Verant and the community. Below is an except from a thread about the nasty enchanter charm nerf during PoP. It details how he supposedly came to the conclusion of what the charm nerf should.

Poster: Cantatus
"And then despite all the rants on our boards about Sony completing ignoring other concerns of ours while continually bashing us with the nerfbat as if we were in a game of Whack-A-Mole the Charm nerf was handled the exact same way. Did the pleading of them discussing the changes with us like they did in the case of Manaburn to Wizards and mitigation changes to Monks gain us the same curtousy? No. All we got was Absor telling us that they had been working closely with 5 Enchanters on Test to ensure the CoD changes weren't too horrible. Apparently those 5 Enchanters speak the gospel truth despite the fact that not only tons of Enchanters think the nerf was overdone but also several other classes."

Original thread here: https://thedruidsgrove.org/archive/eq/t-628.html

So that might be it. 5 Enchanters who play on the test server may have decided what the nerf would be for the rest of the population. That is textbook asinine by today's standards of MMORPG testing. Absor is the same man that argued "druids are fine" as they dominated each expansion in terms of solo ability while also being able to offer group utility. I suspect the coding for enchanter charm was gimped from launch on live and no one on the Verant team took the time to correct it. Couple that with Absor's ability to turn cheek on non druid classes and you have the reason why charm was unreliable.

I'm keeping my tin foil hat on for this. I believe I'm right!

Double triple /s

But you're wrong about one thing. EQ classic is not designed for the players or by today's MMO standards where if warlocks bitch enough pre expansion launch they get a blanket 10% buff across the board.

Back in the day the decisions were made by one or two people to suit the desires of the devs. With the input of maybe their enchanter buddy on test, maybe taken into consideration.

If the devs from the Verant days saw how charm, channeling, and lulls where used herei. P99, and memblurs. They would have been nerfed into the ground.

Necromancer should be top classic class, followed closely by druids in popularity and shamans in actual power.

Ench, wiz, and mages all fell about equal in power. Because the Froglok King, Fungus King, whatever have u would've literally sliced them all to shreds with three attacks even with runes.

Necromancers where the only class that could reliably get single mobs rooted and parked and murdered with dots and pets.

Charm sucked. It was a gimmick, always intended to be a gimmick.

[starkind]

Double triple /s

But you're wrong about one thing. EQ classic is not designed for the players or by today's MMO standards where if warlocks bitch enough pre expansion launch they get a blanket 10% buff across the board.

Back in the day the decisions were made by one or two people to suit the desires of the devs. With the input of maybe their enchanter buddy on test, maybe taken into consideration.

If the devs from the Verant days saw how charm, channeling, and lulls where used herei. P99, and memblurs. They would have been nerfed into the ground.

Necromancer should be top classic class, followed closely by druids in popularity and shamans in actual power.

Ench, wiz, and mages all fell about equal in power. Because the Froglok King, Fungus King, whatever have u would've literally sliced them all to shreds with three attacks even with runes.

Necromancers where the only class that could reliably get single mobs rooted and parked and murdered with dots and pets.

Charm sucked. It was a gimmick, always intended to be a gimmick.

Sometimes ppl got lucky with charm and lull but it was never used for serious leveling by the majority. Mostly by well geared high end Enchanters to push what they could do, or with the help of friends. Much like ppl using wort pots, root nets, and strings to gimmick solo.

Anything anyone does on p99 with these gimmicks doesn't at all compare to classic in anyway.

They're p99 feats of strength and definitely overdue for some consideration.

[starkind]

Thx for the druidsgrove link tho bananaboi.

[Nirgon]

Hope I'm alive for the great degenerate purge

[Delekhan]

I think most of us agree Charm isn't the same as it was back then, but I think it's pretty fair to say Charm in P99 feels right. I like it the way it is here. Chanter on classic was a fuckin drag.

[Gustoo]

Most important part of your quote was the fact that they said Druids dominated solo for every expansion.

[starkind]

Meh. The goal of this game was to be brutal and troll players like it was some kinda grand table top game where if the wizard was polymorphing everything the DM would just put them up against something with polymorphing as an innate ability lol. Or a whopping 90% spell resist lol. Or the wizard would become the victim of a trap. Or a million other fun ways to die horrifically and unexpectedly.

[HanzzYolo]

I trust everyone's non-biased recollection of charm mechanics from 20 years ago. Let's rewrite the code based on their memories.

[Clazxiss]

Double triple /s

But you're wrong about one thing. EQ classic is not designed for the players or by today's MMO standards where if warlocks bitch enough pre expansion launch they get a blanket 10% buff across the board.

Back in the day the decisions were made by one or two people to suit the desires of the devs. With the input of maybe their enchanter buddy on test, maybe taken into consideration.

If the devs from the Verant days saw how charm, channeling, and lulls where used herei. P99, and memblurs. They would have been nerfed into the ground.

Necromancer should be top classic class, followed closely by druids in popularity and shamans in actual power.

Ench, wiz, and mages all fell about equal in power. Because the Froglok King, Fungus King, whatever have u would've literally sliced them all to shreds with three attacks even with runes.

Necromancers where the only class that could reliably get single mobs rooted and parked and murdered with dots and pets.

Charm sucked. It was a gimmick, always intended to be a gimmick.

And this is the part where I remind you and others that the EQ/Verant devs were not good at their job. There is a reason only a few of them would go on to bigger and better things.

You mention the devs would've nerfed charms, lulls, and channeling if they saw how they would be used today. Those spells and ability are used exactly how they should be, crowd control. The fact you anticipate that's how the devs would respond is not wrong though. That's how they typically responded to such things on live because, they always felt they were right without ever consulting the players.

Listening to players, and sifting through the negative nancies, is an integral part of making solid games in today's gaming market. What I'm pointing out is the fact this was non existent back in the day for EQ is why the dev team handled class balancing so poorly, leading to other major problems down the road.

People who are screaming for class nerfs are actually asking Rogean and Nilbog to adopt the classic Verant (Absor) attitude toward the P99 playerbase. You do not want this, ever.

[starkind]

And going on to bigger and better things charm is almost non existent in any other mmos.

Aside from one or two mobs with super buffs intended to be used mind control in wow...

Pretty sure eq2 charm is practically just some kinda flavor if it exists at all?

Care to cite any of these devs and games where charm works like p99?

There's absolutely zero evidence across the board of charm being so good aside from data collection post pop on takp.

If u want to remake classic at some point you need to go off the all around general consensus that charm sucked by the majority of classic players, testers, and even back in the day devs and guides who probably get a good chuckle at enchanters clutching their pearls here.

[Nirgon]

Sorry you can't charm a pet for AoW like less advanced humans did 20 years ago

Maybe try practice, effort and animal fats/meat based protein in your diet

[Jimjam]

I trust everyone's non-biased recollection of charm mechanics from 20 years ago. Let's rewrite the code based on their memories.

What do you think the current iteration of charm on p1999 is built from?

[Stonewallx39]

I vividly remember charm being too unreliable to use, and people raging at enchanters for trying to use it in our groups. This is also why everyone fawned over the Magician pet. Nothing came close to it... P99 is not classic at all when it comes to charm...

Do you think it’s possible you experienced this because enchanters (just like everyone else in 1999) didn’t fully understand the mechanics like we do today?

Most people were likely:
Not maxing charisma (OP said they were but he wasn’t an enchanter)
Charming too high of levels mobs
Were not focusing or -mr spells and gear

If you skip any of those on p99 you’re going to have a bad time.

[Clazxiss]

Do you think it’s possible you experienced this because enchanters (just like everyone else in 1999) didn’t fully understand the mechanics like we do today?

Most people were likely:
Not maxing charisma (OP said they were but he wasn’t an enchanter)
Charming too high of levels mobs
Were not focusing or -mr spells and gear

If you skip any of those on p99 you’re going to have a bad time.

There is strong truth to this. Unless you had someone take you under their wing or you decided to visit castersrealm.com, you learned your class through trial and error. I remember having to check Allakazam for the list my spells as well learning what they did.

[RecondoJoe]

I always lol when people act like players didn’t know to max charisma for enchanters and this is some kind of revelation that happened recently

Most of the people I grouped with has significantly better gear than players on P99

I recently inspected a rogue on P99 blue and gasped at his armor. People who main rogues there are rare, and seeing one with good gear is rare... and the I realized that even though his gear was dreamy by p99 standards that it was absolutely Garbo compared to my rogues gear 20 years ago.

[starkind]

I feel like p99 is contractually obligated to implement as much charm nerf code as possible and that they can invent to retain permissions to be a classic server.

[Vivitron]

What do you think the current iteration of charm on p1999 is built from?

Torven posted in one of the bug threads that his logs from charming with his druid on Al'Kabor (the Mac server that was essentially Nov 2002 mechanics, about a year out of era for us) showed ~55 tick average duration on easy charms, and that he confirmed roughly the same on a later era live server. I parsed a couple of my xp sessions on p99 green at closer to ~65 ticks, although I'm not sure if my sample was really large enough to say our charms stick better than Torven's logs.

So my serious answer to your question is that whatever the current iteration of charm was built from was fairly close to (live, not TAKP) Al'Kabor which matched later era live.

[Gustoo]

That's pretty robust (like most P99 details)

There maybe some random break murder your-ass component that is missing from our charm that is resulting in the 65 tick average and general user friendliness of charms here.

[loramin]

Most people were likely:
Not maxing charisma (OP said they were but he wasn’t an enchanter)
Charming too high of levels mobs
Were not focusing or -mr spells and gear

We have 10+ pages of people saying "it's the -MR and Cha gear" ... and yet when it comes to Druids it's crickets.

[beargryllz]

Well, in the early days snared/DoTed mobs didn't lose 33.3% of their DoT's damage, so snaring + DoTing was the best way to level as a Druid ... because the rules worked differently.

But that stopped in '99 https://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes#September_13.2C_1999 (and, seeing as how it was in the patch notes, pretty much every Druid knew about the change instantly). From that point on root/rot became the de facto Druid soloing technique, with quadding and charming being risky but potentially more lucrative approaches.

But again ... if it was as easy to charm on live as it was here, basic logic dictates a hell of a lot more Druids would have charmed ... instead of it what everyone remembers it being on live: a relatively niche, high risk technique.

High risk in 1999 meant "oh god if I go any deeper and attempt to break this room, I might *never* get this corpse back. I certainly don't know any clerics that can rez me even if I could find it..."

There is no high risk now. Pull the entire bar in Unrest and if we die, there are 18 clerics camped out on backup accounts ready to log in and fix us up. Free buffs too

[starkind]

High risk in 1999 meant "oh god if I go any deeper and attempt to break this room, I might *never* get this corpse back. I certainly don't know any clerics that can rez me even if I could find it..."

There is no high risk now. Pull the entire bar in Unrest and if we die, there are 18 clerics camped out on backup accounts ready to log in and fix us up. Free buffs too

Ugh.

Face palm tears uncontrollable sobbing . Jpg

[Old_PVP]

I remember when chanters could cast illusions on group members. Anyone else remember those glory days? When was that removed?

[Jibartik]

We have 10+ pages of people saying "it's the -MR and Cha gear" ... and yet when it comes to Druids it's crickets.

it takes playrs here 10+ years to learn how to charm half as effiicenty as tecmos

puh-lease

nobody knew how to do it in 99 if they did they didnt teach anyone.

[RecondoJoe]

jibartik is getting dangerously close to snortles level of dissent...

watch it

[Stonewallx39]

It’s not even that you’re delusional, you’re just straight up lying.

I always lol when people act like players didn’t know to max charisma for enchanters and this is some kind of revelation that happened recently

They didn’t, heck most people on this server don’t even know how critical it is.

Most of the people I grouped with has significantly better gear than players on P99

No they didn’t.

. I recently inspected a rogue on P99 blue and gasped at his armor. People who main rogues there are rare, and seeing one with good gear is rare... and the I realized that even though his gear was dreamy by p99 standards that it was absolutely Garbo compared to my rogues gear 20 years ago.

This didn’t happen...

[RecondoJoe]

They didn’t, heck most people on this server don’t even know how critical it is.

News flash, most people on P99 are really bad. I've said this from day one. It was not normal to have a group full of kids who spent 65% of the game AFK, expecting to get carried, refusing to run anywhere without SoW, or being scared to pull mobs in a basic bitch dungeon.

PS. This guide (https://www.angelfire.com/rpg/whitewind/gtxt/guides/UChantGuide.htm) was written in 1999, dumbass. "My research has proven to me that CHA has a profound impact on charming, without a doubt"

[Barlu]

I always lol when people act like players didn’t know to max charisma for enchanters and this is some kind of revelation that happened recently

Most of the people I grouped with has significantly better gear than players on P99

I recently inspected a rogue on P99 blue and gasped at his armor. People who main rogues there are rare, and seeing one with good gear is rare... and the I realized that even though his gear was dreamy by p99 standards that it was absolutely Garbo compared to my rogues gear 20 years ago.

It’s impossible to have bad gear on a TLP. Your 72 man raid gets 100% of raid mobs that spawn every week. On top of that being able to get Kronos to sell for RMT means the top droppable gear from the previous expansion is available for sale in Baz as soon as it’s been replaced. Saying TLP players have worse gear than p99 is just not accurate.

[RecondoJoe]

It’s impossible to have bad gear on a TLP. Your 72 man raid gets 100% of raid mobs that spawn every week. On top of that being able to get Kronos to sell for RMT means the top droppable gear from the previous expansion is available for sale in Baz as soon as it’s been replaced. Saying TLP players have worse gear than p99 is just not accurate.

im talking about on p99
not on tlp

like most of the rogues i see have bad gear on p99

and yeah tlp is hella easy... i can go farm warrens for like 30 minutes, and make enough plat to buy an upgrade that woulda been considered insanely good item 20 years ago

[cd288]

News flash, most people on P99 are really bad. I've said this from day one. It was not normal to have a group full of kids who spent 65% of the game AFK, expecting to get carried, refusing to run anywhere without SoW, or being scared to pull mobs in a basic bitch dungeon.

PS. This guide (https://www.angelfire.com/rpg/whitewind/gtxt/guides/UChantGuide.htm) was written in 1999, dumbass. "My research has proven to me that CHA has a profound impact on charming, without a doubt"

It’s pretty sad that you seem to have negative things to say about/experiences on this server yet you can’t seem to stop coming back to it. Stop being so soft. Don’t bother with P99 if you don’t like it.

Remember when you deleted your characters and posted about it here and everyone was like “um k? Cool thanks for letting us know? K bye”

[cd288]

There is strong truth to this. Unless you had someone take you under their wing or you decided to visit castersrealm.com, you learned your class through trial and error. I remember having to check Allakazam for the list my spells as well learning what they did.

Yeah honestly the biggest things I remember as far as actual gameplay mechanics go was that 1. So many people didn’t bother debuffing a mob’s MR...and then they’d try and Charm and naturally that wasn’t a great idea, and 2. For awhile people had no idea that one of the saving rolls for Charm was level difference...I remember being in groups where people wanted the charmed pet to be the highest level the ench could get the spell to stick on! Lol

[unsunghero]

Things I personally had no idea about when I leveled an enchanter to lev 35 in vanilla EQ:

1. Gnomes could see through walls (I never used gnome illusion)

2. Lull didn't require line of sight and could be used with gnome illusion to lull mobs multiple rooms away using the /target command

3. GCD clickies meant you could stun and re-charm or mez before a mob could hit me. I just face tanked the mobs after using stun and prayed I didn't get interrupted while trying to re-charm or mez

Also

On P99 it costs about 1k pp to get enough gear for ~205 unbuffed charisma. I had 210 unbuffed charisma by level 18 on P99. I wasn't even charming often because the animation was still better than mob dps at these levels. On vanilla EQ I never had nearly the charisma I have on P99, I think I ended up having around 150 and I had far more pp on my vanilla EQ enchanter by level 35 than I did on my p99 enchanter by level 18

I think I grouped maybe 2 or 3 times in vanilla EQ. I remember them vividly because being praised for handling trains well was what made enchanter my favorite class, but I still solo'ed my entire time in vanilla EQ. About 80% of that was attempting to charm solo

But, by all means, program in an artificial break to charm occurring every 3-5 minutes on P99, and have a message sent to the player in chat saying "you have been afflicted by people's hazy memories of what vanilla EQ was like"

I'm all for it. Got the server's 9520258 necro alt ready to go

[starkind]

I'm all for it. Got the server's 9520258 necro alt ready to go

Lich is solidly confirmed like basically the best spell ever in game so it's no contest for me who can reliably churn mobs the fastest.

Really enjoying the sarcasm from enchanters who feel basically entitled to be the best fungi tunic farmer in p99 "classic".

[unsunghero]

Lich is solidly confirmed like basically the best spell ever in game so it's no contest for me who can reliably churn mobs the fastest.

Really enjoying the sarcasm from enchanters who feel basically entitled to be the best fungi tunic farmer in p99 "classic".

I’m no expert since my highest level char is 40 on p99, but isn’t there an item that lets everyone become an enchanter for a short while that’s useful for attempting hard named kills

I’m flattered you think I would ever be enough of a neckbeard to camp a fungi tunic. Your confidence in my video game discipline is inspiring

[Terrok]

because it basically sucked

i played live from 1999 to 2005

i was crazy its the only thing i did

i know

charm should last 30 seconds at best most of the time even at 255 charisma until pop

Fraps or it didnt happen

[cd288]

I’m no expert since my highest level char is 40 on p99, but isn’t there an item that lets everyone become an enchanter for a short while that’s useful for attempting hard named kills

I’m flattered you think I would ever be enough of a neckbeard to camp a fungi tunic. Your confidence in my video game discipline is inspiring

I play wizard and rogue on green, with lowbie pally, ranger, and Necro alts. Don’t even play an enchanter and I think the nerf charm argument has no basis

[strete]

the only thing I've taken away from this thread is that we should nerf mages more

[UrkTheSlayer]

the only thing I've taken away from this thread is that we should nerf mages more

[Nirgon]

The degenerate crusade continues everywhere, but also here

[loramin]

it takes playrs here 10+ years to learn how to charm half as effiicenty as tecmos

puh-lease

nobody knew how to do it in 99 if they did they didnt teach anyone.

Jesus fuck.

Charm is unclassic, for Enchanters AND Druids

Live people couldn't play Enchanters properly

Right, but what about the Druids?

Live people couldn't play Enchanters properly (like Tecmos does here)

Shut up about Enchanters already :D Explain why every Druid wasn't soloing in clasic!

[Jimjam]

Druids, being nature boys, lived in remote areas with poor internet so relied on safe XP options such as root rotting and tumpy tonics.

[Naerron]

silly rabbit....you meant MAGES didn't charm till pop.

gogo dire elemental charm, BOT was their bitch

[Nirgon]

300 more pages of threads isnt gonna do it

You need all the cucks to spam petitions about how they arent getting raid mobs cuz of it

[Jibartik]

Jesus fuck.
Shut up about Enchanters already :D Explain why every Druid wasn't soloing in clasic!

WHAT every druid I know soloed to 50

when I was 16 I was in range of a very well known PK druid named Starsparkle or some shit so i dueled her
she ran off and charmed a gater

and EFFED ME UP

I was like wtf happened???

you people are all nuts

get a grip

[Jibartik]

the only time I saw druids in p99 start charming was AFTER tecmos taught every enchanter how to

loramin since you are so angere about this you cant even talk about it without swearing and attacking people maybe it is time to take another break

[loramin]

the only time I saw druids in p99 start charming was AFTER tecmos taught every enchanter how to

loramin since you are so angere about this you cant even talk about it without swearing and attacking people maybe it is time to take another break

Profanity is my reaction when I explicitly make a logical argument about B, and I get a flood of replies arguing about A.

[Jibartik]

you're not making any logical arguments you're just saying your opinion

It seems illogical that it would take a community of players 20 years to figure out how to charm but its reality that that is true.

[Horza]

the only time I saw druids in p99 start charming was AFTER tecmos taught every enchanter how to

loramin since you are so angere about this you cant even talk about it without swearing and attacking people maybe it is time to take another break

Jibartik seems really desperate to run off other forum posters today. Problems at home?

[Jibartik]

Yeah im the bad guy because people are mad and try to take it out on other poststers.

[Horza]

Yeah im the bad guy because people are mad and try to take it out on other poststers.

Get a life before you hit six thousand posts.

[Jibartik]

Horza horza horza horza horza

[Nirgon]

It's the effort required to maintain a charmed pet that others are willing to invest, and they are not. It's classic here maybe outside of resists overall being way too forgiving. I tried very hard to stress that with roots holding way too easily and never seeing fairly steady partials outside of raids. Whatever. The AoW kill in Velious destroys this entire degenerate narrative, their favorite successful tactic is bullying the staff until they crack and ruin the nostalgic experience.

[knucklehairs]

The information you can get from searching wiki is way more broken and not classic than any class will ever be who gives a shit the servers fun how it is

[Vivitron]

Profanity is my reaction when I explicitly make a logical argument about B, and I get a flood of replies arguing about A.

"Druids weren't charming on live. You know it; I know it; everybody knows it" isn't a logical argument, it's gaslighting.

[Nirgon]

The information you can get from searching wiki is way more broken and not classic than any class will ever be who gives a shit the servers fun how it is

Bunch of people failing research combines cuz they blindly trusted the info there lol

[Gustoo]

Bunch of people failing research combines cuz they blindly trusted the info there lol

Thats classic too.

[Vivitron]

I will say overall I've gotten a lot of benefit from the wiki.

[Nirgon]

Thats classic too.

It's more classic to pour trains into languages to be able to read the various books telling you what the recipes were.

[Toxigen]

I will say overall I've gotten a lot of benefit from the wiki.

bigly wiki bene

[Sadre]

I trust everyone's non-biased recollection of charm mechanics from 20 years ago. Let's rewrite the code based on their memories.

You really do not want to ask about my memory. Really, you do not. It's nuclear grade.

For example, I know exactly what you did in 1999-2000.

It didn't involve playing an enchanter. Correct? I thought so.

I know more.

[Nirgon]

And no one here is better than the top players in the live era. You'd lose to those guilds badly.

[Jibartik]

The information you can get from searching wiki is way more broken and not classic than any class will ever be who gives a shit the servers fun how it is

[Jibartik]

It took 20 years to flawlessly spoil this game at least.

[loramin]

"Druids weren't charming on live. You know it; I know it; everybody knows it" isn't a logical argument, it's gaslighting.

And when you make a false claim, and pretend that I made it, it's called making a straw man argument.

I never said "no one ever charmed on live". What I said (and what remains an incontrovertible fact, which anyone who played a meaningful amount of classic EQ will remember) is that most Druids root/rotted or kited (quad or otherwise).

Look at this page from Caster's Realm filled with player guides for Druids 29-50 ... in 2002 (ie. after Luclin's release!): https://web.archive.org/web/20040513083923/http://eq.crgaming.com/playguides/default.asp?Class=Druid&Category=4

There's 20 different articles about quading and solo kiting and root/rotting ... and not a single one about charming!

So again, either the vast, vast majority of Druids on live were complete idiots who ignored a much faster way to XP ... or that much faster way to XP didn't exist on live.

[loramin]

Here's how Druids were actually playing in classic, from my own home server of Brisltlebane ... "The Fastest EXP in EverQuest!" ;):

32-41, THE FASTEST EXP IN EVERQUEST!!! - Rhayne, Bristlebane
Ok here is the way i got through 32-44 the fastest way. First I went to the Barbarian camp in West Karana. You will see a bunch of barbarians. Go to Ulrich Mcmanas, (hes by a pin with a wolf in it). What you want to do is get as far back possible and snare him, then just combust him to death. Do this stradigie to 36. Oh ya almost forgot Ulrich Drops up to 5 pp, words, runes,FS,Bronze pieces and some times some Beer.

At 36 You will be able to Kill Einhorst Mcmanas, there is one problam, ulrich must be dead for you to pull einhorst, when you pull einhorst ulrich will help and attack you. So have someone be killing Ulrich and have them tell you when ulrich is dead. Or the other stradigeie what i do is harmoney ulrich then pull Einhorst. Ok this is how you kill Einhorst, snare him then cast your 34 spell fury of air then go to combust then keep on switching off.YOu can kill Erinhorst until 39. Einhorst drops the same as Ulrich only he drops just a little bitmore often.

At 39 you will be able to kill both Ulrich and Einhorst, first pull ulrich then Einhorst you can do this until 41. Well hope these stradigies helped, Goold Luck!

Strategy Submitted on: Sunday, December 16, 2001

[Vivitron]

Yes, I'm sure that the claim that camping a single static span is the fastest xp is something that we should take as literal truth and not some kids clickbait title. Keen interpretation of that evidence, loramin.

[Vivitron]

I'll also add that charming doesn't seem to be the dominant p99 green druid strategy, based on casual observation of class population of ct gators and perma pits, and the attitude towards charm of druids I've grouped with.

[loramin]

My point was that not a single person, post-classic, recommended charming ... out of the twenty Druids who took the time to create guides. If charming was as viable as it is here, logic would dictate that at least 5% of Druids might use and recommend it ... but no one did. Almost as if charming is easier here than it was on live ...

The post from Bristlebane was largely for entertainment purposes (I was hoping the winking emoji, overwrought claim in the subject, complete lack of respect for English grammar and spelling in the post itself, etc. would have hinted as much) ... although it does still serve as one more data point that classic Druids weren't charming.

[RecondoJoe]

Here's how Druids were actually playing in classic, from my own home server of Brisltlebane ... "The Fastest EXP in EverQuest!" ;):

A lot of people on P99 are completely oblivious to the fact that they are only leveling fast because of broken ZEMs. In their minds players were just really bad back in the day, and the reason they're able to level so fast is because they know how to play the game now. If they released a new P99 server with no ZEMs, I don't think a lot of people would even hit level 50, nor would you see a large number of players grouping in dungeons when they could get faster exp solo'ing, with better loot and without the headache.

Like as someone who just started playing P99 shortly after green was released... I immediately knew the experience was wrong. I wasn't just some dumb kid who couldn't figure out how to play the game. I was working my fucking ass off, dude. I remember having to level in Lake of Ill Omen, OverThere, Dreadlands etc. because there was you couldn't just go to CT and go from 30-45 in a day. It felt like doing 30-40 in OT took months, literally. Months of sitting on a hill pulling cactuses, and hoping to God you didn't aggro that dark elf guard that runs at SoW speed.

So when I started playing on P99 and was level 50 in two weeks.. I was like man, something is really wrong here....

[starkind]

I favor quad kiting.

[Vivitron]

My point was that not a single person, post-classic, recommended charming ... out of the twenty Druids who took the time to create guides. If charming was as viable as it is here, logic would dictate that at least 5% of Druids might use and recommend it ... but no one did. Almost as if charming is easier here than it was on live ...

The post from Bristlebane was largely for entertainment purposes (I was hoping the winking emoji, overwrought claim in the subject, complete lack of respect for English grammar and spelling in the post itself, etc. would have hinted as much) ... although it does still serve as one more data point that classic Druids weren't charming.

I will try to keep a better humor in our conversations going forward;)

I clicked through the more guides link at the bottom of the page and reached a charming one: https://web.archive.org/web/20030508060215/http://eq.crgaming.com/playguides/VIEW.ASP?ID=3746

[Hyjalx]

Bristlebane server. 2nd serverwide (as Acarer) to max AA's using charm in tactics pits charming a frenzied initiate with glowy mage weapons. Some female darkelf enchanter from Darkwind beat me to the #1 spot

Dire charm was a joke.

We also used charmed pets to kill AoW for the very first time on Bristlebane server (this happened a couple months into Luclin and was a multi-guild effort)

Hope this helps.

[RecondoJoe]

The way I discovered P99 was I was watching YouTube, as I usually do. And I was like man, I wonder if there's any EQ videos up... because when you played EQ back in the day... there was no YouTube, and you had to use your imagination to see what most zones were like.

Naturally I found that channel of the Enchanter who solos content. You know how like on P99, almost everyone who makes an Enchanter made one because of this guy's channel? Well, in the video I watched (I believe it was him solo'ing in Splitpaw), he mentioned that charm in P99 was not classic and he wasn't sure if this was by accident or if it was done so intentionally because the devs like it like this.

I'll try to find the video...

[Gustoo]

Bristlebane server. 2nd serverwide (as Acarer) to max AA's using charm in tactics pits charming a frenzied initiate with glowy mage weapons. Some female darkelf enchanter from Darkwind beat me to the #1 spot

Dire charm was a joke.

We also used charmed pets to kill AoW for the very first time on Bristlebane server (this happened a couple months into Luclin and was a multi-guild effort)

Hope this helps.

So does it feel classic to you? Did you have a level 50 in vanilla and a 60 in kunark and charm then?

Just curious. Lots changed post Luclin and we don't seem to even document it here.

[unsunghero]

The way I discovered P99 was I was watching YouTube, as I usually do. And I was like man, I wonder if there's any EQ videos up... because when you played EQ back in the day... there was no YouTube, and you had to use your imagination to see what most zones were like.

Naturally I found that channel of the Enchanter who solos content. You know how like on P99, almost everyone who makes an Enchanter made one because of this guy's channel? Well, in the video I watched (I believe it was him solo'ing in Splitpaw), he mentioned that charm in P99 was not classic and he wasn't sure if this was by accident or if it was done so intentionally because the devs like it like this.

I'll try to find the video...

Hey a guy said it in a video and Loramin said it online, that’s all the proof I need

Also (not ragging on you, just questioning) why make a guide or watch a guide about soloing splitpaw? That zone is a joke to solo, at least the parts I did. Spread out mobs, easy pulls and few or no roamers

I started the same way as you with watching “solo artists” as they call themselves, but I was more interested in seeing Howling Stones or other high risk places

[Vivitron]

Hey a guy said it in a video and Loramin said it online, that’s all the proof I need

Also (not ragging on you, just questioning) why make a guide or watch a guide about soloing splitpaw? That zone is a joke to solo, at least the parts I did. Spread out mobs, easy pulls and few or no roamers

I started the same way as you with watching “solo artists” as they call themselves, but I was more interested in seeing Howling Stones or other high risk places

A premise of Tecmos' videos was that he was going to make videos of the camps he was leveling on, and Paw snakes was one of the camps someone suggested to him.

[RecondoJoe]

yeah, the most famous Enchanter on the entirety of P99 is a less credible source of information than a random alt account that posts two times a year whose source is making blatant statements that they already made on their main account

[Vivitron]

yeah, the most famous Enchanter on the entirety of P99 is a less credible source of information than a random alt account that posts two times a year whose source is making blatant statements that they already made on their main account

Credibility doesn't enter into it when you haven't even posted the claim yet.

[unsunghero]

Credibility doesn't enter into it when you haven't even posted the claim yet.

Or the fact that it was Tecmos

[RecondoJoe]

Credibility doesn't enter into it when you haven't even posted the claim yet.

There ya' go, bud. (https://youtu.be/YalrF2KEkcI)

The only player to document hundreds of hours of Enchanter gameplay on all iterations of P99 is a less credible source of information than random alt accounts on a forum.

It's funny because on daybreak forums they don't even dispute this because they aren't in denial. The system P99 uses for charm isn't even the same system used by Verant Interactive. LITERALLY. (https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/how-have-enchanters-charm-changed-from-p99-to-live.254676/)

[RecondoJoe]

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=403239&postcount=9

imagine being this mad over a word on your computer monitor

like lmao

[unsunghero]

There ya' go, bud. (https://youtu.be/YalrF2KEkcI)

The only player to document hundreds of hours of Enchanter gameplay on all iterations of P99 is a less credible source of information than random alt accounts on a forum.

It's funny because on daybreak forums they don't even dispute this because they aren't in denial. The system P99 uses for charm isn't even the same system used by Verant Interactive. LITERALLY. (https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/how-have-enchanters-charm-changed-from-p99-to-live.254676/)

I’m at work, can’t watch the vid atm. The second link is worthless. “Charm is very hard on p99” and then a person asking what they mean? Sounds like the person making the claim isn’t even sure what platform he’s playing on

And then a person mentions that an emulator server is an emulated version of the game. Holy shit I’ve learned so much today

[RecondoJoe]

i assure u that i can care less about proving anything to anonymous pussies on the internet

i just think its fun making u look stupid even on ur alt accounts
imagine being scared of your internet persona on a game no one gives a fuck about lmao

i cant even imagine

[unsunghero]

i assure u that i can care less about proving anything to anonymous pussies on the internet

i just think its fun making u look stupid even on ur alt accounts
imagine being scared of your internet persona on a game no one gives a fuck about lmao

i cant even imagine

Come call me that to my face, I’m in AZ. We can make this not anonymous any time you want, champion. Have no problem getting more intimate

[starkind]

OG feelings matter, like, a lot here.

IMO

[Gustoo]

Project 1999 has had to hodgepodge every aspect of the game play to emulate live. the systems aren't the same they are guessed based on logs when available. Logs only show frequency of breaks and stuff. Then they need to make a code that approximate that frequency and hope that it is close enough to actual.

They do their best. Enchys are strong here. For a long time rogues and monks and warriors could channel clickies and they were pretty much incredible. Still are, but even ore so.

[unsunghero]

I don’t care if they want to program in an artificial charm break every 3-5 minutes and say it’s based on people’s memories of live

My enchanter is level 40 with probably less than 5 days /played time. No doubt there’s enchanters on here who are already max or near max level, working on their epic, etc. Or ones trying to charm solo their way through a 50+ hell level. Those are the ones who are going to be fucked, and probably pretty disappointed

I would switch to Necro if they made chanters shit here based on some vague memory with no actual code to even use to emulate it. Or switch to a different game. Not a big deal

[UrkTheSlayer]

I don’t care if they want to program in an artificial charm break every 3-5 minutes and say it’s based on people’s memories of live

My enchanter is level 40 with probably less than 5 days /played time. No doubt there’s enchanters on here who are already max or near max level, working on their epic, etc. Or ones trying to charm solo their way through a 50+ hell level. Those are the ones who are going to be fucked, and probably pretty disappointed

I would switch to Necro if they made chanters shit here based on some vague memory with no actual code to even use to emulate it. Or switch to a different game. Not a big deal

Come call me that to my face, I’m in AZ. We can make this not anonymous any time you want, champion. Have no problem getting more intimate

I’m from az I’ll get intimate with you, I can whisper way dirtier things in your ear then he can- but will you buy me dinner first?

[unsunghero]

I’m from az I’ll get intimate with you, I can whisper way dirtier things in your ear then he can- but will you buy me dinner first?

Lol deal

[RecondoJoe]

i will fight everyone on this forum literally if they drive to my house
in a couple of weeks my parents will be out of town

let me know if u are interested

[loramin]

I will try to keep a better humor in our conversations going forward;)

I clicked through the more guides link at the bottom of the page and reached a charming one: https://web.archive.org/web/20030508060215/http://eq.crgaming.com/playguides/VIEW.ASP?ID=3746

Right, and as I've said: people did charm in classic. That guide proves what we already knew: that charming was possible on live, just as it is here.

What I'm saying is that there were 20 guides on the page I linked, and as you found a whole bunch more on the rest of the site ... but you found one on charming. If live players had all the same tools back then we have now (and we agree: they did) ... and if it was as easy/safe/effective as it is here ... why wasn't it the topic of 50+% of the guides?

The reply here seems to be "on live, only one in a thousand ever tried using their class spells to get XP, and he had a terrible Internet connection" ... and there's absolutely some truth to that! :D

But it doesn't fully explain the gigantic delta between us and live: many did have stable connections, there were tons of guides, forum discussions, etc. about the best way to level ... but while charm is obviously better here, it was barely mentioned there. Why?

[unsunghero]

i will fight everyone on this forum literally if they drive to my house
in a couple of weeks my parents will be out of town

let me know if u are interested

First off, don’t give your house address to strangers on the internet. I would have picked a place in the area, probably at a boxing gym ideally, had you wanted to come to me

Secondly, it is kind of you to wait for the folks to leave. I would feel guilty beating you up in front of your mom. But if we meet at a gym, they wouldn’t be there anyway. Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you are taking care of them and that’s why you live with them

I don’t see it as worth the money to travel just for you but if you let me know the general area (don’t pick somewhere close if you are worried I’m a hackerman who would try to doxx) in the US, I’ll keep it in mind if I’m ever in the area. I wouldn’t get too excited tho, I rarely travel

[Sadre]

And no one here is better than the top players in the live era. You'd lose to those guilds badly.

Not if you ban macros and interrupt-grade packet intercept scripts. Arthritis. I haven't been able to double click in 10 years.

Hook up some cortisone, then it's a go. You can do that, right?

[Graahle]

I don't believe anything any general poster says here.

You're old. You don't remember how it was 20 years ago. Get over it.

[Arteker]

frozen moses on velious tactic disagree with you ,Guard farm with dual daggers for cash disagrees with you, charming the dwag of hhk to keep it locked says u wrong,.

just another retarded wich probably played warrior with dual lamys back in the day .

[Arteker]

Bristlebane server. 2nd serverwide (as Acarer) to max AA's using charm in tactics pits charming a frenzied initiate with glowy mage weapons. Some female darkelf enchanter from Darkwind beat me to the #1 spot

Dire charm was a joke.

We also used charmed pets to kill AoW for the very first time on Bristlebane server (this happened a couple months into Luclin and was a multi-guild effort)

Hope this helps.
Serverwide first character wih full aas on pop was Merodeador, dark elf from solusek ro , using infamous bard can kite the whole fucking halls of honour alone .

Frozen moses was nerfed before luclin, back in the day u could even charm bloody protectors of zek but they broke alot

[bwe]

Make GINA a bannable offense

[Sadre]

I don't believe anything any general poster says here.

You're old. You don't remember how it was 20 years ago. Get over it.

Autists remember where they sat in 6th grade. I sat next to Jodi and we were assigned study partners. She had a boyfriend in 8th grade who had messed up acne. Jodi was an early bloomer, about 5'4", Jewish. The boyfriend was obviously farming the 6th graders for tit jobs. The fact he had really angry acne put me off tit jobs for years.

I begrudged him his capacity for happiness.

[Pulgasari]

Make GINA a bannable offense

[Jibartik]

Right, and as I've said: people did charm in classic. That guide proves what we already knew: that charming was possible on live, just as it is here.

What I'm saying is that there were 20 guides on the page I linked, and as you found a whole bunch more on the rest of the site ... but you found one on charming. If live players had all the same tools back then we have now (and we agree: they did) ... and if it was as easy/safe/effective as it is here ... why wasn't it the topic of 50+% of the guides?

The reply here seems to be "on live, only one in a thousand ever tried using their class spells to get XP, and he had a terrible Internet connection" ... and there's absolutely some truth to that! :D

But it doesn't fully explain the gigantic delta between us and live: many did have stable connections, there were tons of guides, forum discussions, etc. about the best way to level ... but while charm is obviously better here, it was barely mentioned there. Why?

I told you, it took like 10 years for charm to get the way it was here, 6 years ago only 20% of the server did it, now 100%

the internet, guides, youtube, thats how.

no doubt in my mind that in the fast pace 3 years of learning this game that that level of game was never reached by anymore than a select few that were too anti social to be able to explain it or write an article

absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence

[ghost wolves]

Right, and as I've said: people did charm in classic. That guide proves what we already knew: that charming was possible on live, just as it is here.

What I'm saying is that there were 20 guides on the page I linked, and as you found a whole bunch more on the rest of the site ... but you found one on charming. If live players had all the same tools back then we have now (and we agree: they did) ... and if it was as easy/safe/effective as it is here ... why wasn't it the topic of 50+% of the guides?

The reply here seems to be "on live, only one in a thousand ever tried using their class spells to get XP, and he had a terrible Internet connection" ... and there's absolutely some truth to that! :D

But it doesn't fully explain the gigantic delta between us and live: many did have stable connections, there were tons of guides, forum discussions, etc. about the best way to level ... but while charm is obviously better here, it was barely mentioned there. Why?

Maybe because Enc's didn't need to solo. They were always wanted in groups because of haste, clarity and mez. Grouping was safer and more interesting and the way the game was meant to be played. People didn't play EQ to solo. If Enc's didn't have those grouping tools, I'm sure charm soloing would have been a big deal, but they have a great group toolkit so they can level either way.

I didn't play an Enc on classic live, but my brother did. He def would charm in groups because it was fun seeing monsters beat on monsters. He never got the idea to charm solo because he'd be getting tells to join groups wherever he went. It just wasn't really needed.

I saw people with charmed sand giants running through Oasis back on live. More of a vanity thing than anything, but people did use the spell. They just didn't put all the pieces together (GCD clickies, Goblin Ring instant break, etc.) to create a crazy charm solo system, but those tools were there and, like a lot of things in P99, have been defined and streamlined thanks to the wiki for everyone to learn.

And really, what does it matter? It's still hard to charm solo. You need a pretty solid understanding of EQ combat (aggro, GCD, targeting, pet control, etc.). Someone totally new to the game could not, in any way, easily charm solo. It takes practice like bard swarm kiting. The risk is built in and every Enchanter WILL have deaths guaranteed.

[Vivitron]

If charming was as viable as it is here, logic would dictate that at least 5% of Druids might use and recommend it ... but no one did.

You make a big deal about no charm guides being in the list, then double down on your position when I point out a charm guide in the list.

[cd288]

It’s not worth engaging with Loramin on anything to be honest so just save your breath. He’s literally the Donald trump of P99: “THIS IS MY OPINION SO EVERYONE KNOWS THATS THE WAY IT WAS SO THERE”

Sometimes he even likes to use fancy italics, bold, and underline to highlight his pointless stuff

[Danth]

... but while charm is obviously better here, it was barely mentioned there. Why?

...Same reason you saw folks defending things (using these same arguments) ranging from whirl till you hurl back when P99 first opened to broken monk sneak splitting to melee combat bind.

I believe random-type spells in general are too "user friendly" on P99. It's probably an EQ-EMU tuning issue. Not just charm, but lulls, roots, invisibility, pretty much all the random-type spells seem rather too good here. All we have is circumstantial evidence though. The sort of hard proof management prefers likely does not exist due to the original values for those types of things being host-side and hence inaccessible to the community. Anything that was kept in the clientside spelldata files (mana costs, etc) we can easily get right, but stuff that was host-side requires some guesswork.

At any rate I don't care enough to spend much time trying to search for the elusive "smoking gun." Enchanters don't bother me all that much. Mostly they're doing stuff that would've been occupied in the original game anyway due to higher server populations. I hate bards way more.

Danth

[starkind]

People worried about how easy it is to get through 50 hell lvl solo charming Versus people worried about classic everquest and remember rarely seeing soloers and boxers.

ITT.

:thinkface:

[azxten]

Simple reality after reviewing all the evidence on Charm:

1. It was too buggy to use until late classic era. This is already well proven and undeniable. All pets were garbage due to pathing issues, etc and charm was even worse.

2. Charming was done but only in outdoor zones where SoW and open areas allowed escaping certain death from interrupts. It was also used by high level Enchanters who couldn't mez giants and they were pissed about having to charm fire giants to CC them, not excited about it, and multiple posts mention the almost certain death from trying this. This was in a raid situation not soloing FGs or duoing, etc.

3. Channeling made charming almost impossible to do indoors or anywhere else you would be in combat while trying to cast. The stun spells did not mitigate this. IMO this is still the biggest missing component on P99 to "fix" charm.

4. Mob resists were much more intricate on live than on P99. Tons of posts calling out testing and specific mobs in relation to MR. For example, all undead, etc were known to have high MR that made them unsuitable to charm.

5. Charming planar mobs was never worthwhile. It was actually extremely difficult to even mez them working in teams with an MR debuffer, etc. The idea that Brad "The Vision" McQuaid would release Plane of Fear/Hate and then sit back watching Enchanters with 10 charmed pets clearing the whole zone in an hour is laughable. This is a guy who thought kiting mobs was too extreme and outside the vision.

6. There was no "knowledge gap." People were addicted to live EQ, a shit load more people were playing, tons of websites existed with information from beta, etc. Everyone knew how things were supposed to work they just didn't work that way. No shortage of posts from crying Enchanters about all kinds of bugs with their spells not just charm.

7. For group and raid charming something is wrong about aggro generation on P99. Classic era posts support the "untauntable" aggro Enchanters could generate with mez and charm that is nowhere close to how P99 works. We all remember Enchanters running around crying until they died as everyone tried desperately to control a mob that was on them. We already know Mez on P99 is bugged because it is supposed to only wipe aggro on the first cast. You can't recast mez on a mob to re-wipe aggro, it has to fade first then be reapplied. This is at least one big bug/difference on P99 that lets Enchanter have significantly less aggro compared to live.


That's about it. This is the middle ground no one wants to acknowledge it seems. Charming was used, mostly outdoors, and it was never used to clear planes or solo dungeons like it is on P99. It was rarely used in groups as an emergency spell when a wipe seemed certain. Widely regarded as something you'd cast in a group that had an equal chance of getting you killed vs saving the group. This is because of differences in channeling rate, mob MR, aggro, and bugs. Charming eventually reached "P99" status by Velious era and FOH guild posting confirms this and mentions the exact same reasons above. Velious introduced larger zones including dungeons where the Enchanter had room to run and escape melee while charming. Bugs were mostly fixed by this era.

[azxten]

P.S. Tons of evidence supports all the claims made above. It's pretty much undeniable that all of that is true as backed up by evidence, client de-compiles, in era posting, etc. There really shouldn't be anymore discussion on this because it's already proven charm on P99 is nowhere close to classic. Until at a minimum channeling gets fixed then P99 is easy mode. Enchanter just seems to abuse this the most.

[loramin]

Simple reality after reviewing all the evidence on Charm:

...

That's about it. This is the middle ground no one wants to acknowledge it seems. Charming was used, mostly outdoors, and it was never used to clear planes or solo dungeons like it is on P99. It was rarely used in groups as an emergency spell when a wipe seemed certain. Widely regarded as something you'd cast in a group that had an equal chance of getting you killed vs saving the group. This is because of differences in channeling rate, mob MR, aggro, and bugs. Charming eventually reached "P99" status by Velious era and FOH guild posting confirms this and mentions the exact same reasons above. Velious introduced larger zones including dungeons where the Enchanter had room to run and escape melee while charming. Bugs were mostly fixed by this era.

https://i.imgur.com/SQSgHvR.gif

https://i.imgur.com/1p0I4YD.gif

[Jimjam]

I think you missed out what may be a big one - either mob attack could be too low or the by level worn AC caps are too high.

[cd288]

Welcome to the Az and Loramin circle jerk lol

[Jimjam]

https://i.imgur.com/SQSgHvR.gif

I like your House gif.

[unsunghero]

People worried about how easy it is to get through 50 hell lvl solo charming Versus people worried about classic everquest and remember rarely seeing soloers and boxers.

ITT.

:thinkface:

It’s cool man, I’m assuming a lot of people will be like me, and either roll something that is OP then and now like Necro, or just bail, because they got used to playing their class for years a certain way and now that way is no longer viable

Then you can be on the “Necro emulation server”, or the rapidly becoming more dead than Blue on its most dead days emulated server

It will be fun having a whole empty server to yourself, like p99 red. At least until people decide now it’s no longer worth it to keep the server going. But until it gets shut off, it will FEEL really classic. Except for just hardly any players anywhere. That part won’t feel classic. Well maybe classic a few years after WoW came out

I have other games to play, no harm no foul

[unsunghero]

And when I say the Necro emulation server, I say that because from my experience leveling up, necromancer and Druid is like 1/4 the population of green lowbies and mid levels atm

Now factor in that a good chunk of enchanters will either quit or re-roll, and since Druid eats the nerf bat they won’t be as appealing of a re-roll. So necro ranks will continue to swell

Maybe they can do some Necro only RP guilds or something

[unsunghero]

Necro charm gets nerfed as well but IMO they will become the most capable solo’ers aside from geared shaman by default

[bubur]

it's too soon for another annual delete charm thread

this rate of posts is unsustainable and surely will result in euphoria and then despair and ruined lives

don't do this, think

[Toxigen]

a lot of people not playing enchanters in this thread

[Twochain]

Nah, everyone was just bad at enchanter on live + 10 fps and 350 ping

Move to resolved.

[ghost wolves]

P.S. Tons of evidence supports all the claims made above. It's pretty much undeniable that all of that is true as backed up by evidence, client de-compiles, in era posting, etc. There really shouldn't be anymore discussion on this because it's already proven charm on P99 is nowhere close to classic. Until at a minimum channeling gets fixed then P99 is easy mode. Enchanter just seems to abuse this the most.

People in classic weren't good. The game (and MMOs in general) was new. Go find someone who's never played a MMO before and see how long it takes for them to learn how to charm solo. It takes a very solid understanding of EQ combat that people did not have in classic era.

How long did it take for people to figure out about GCD clickies? How long did it take for people to figure out that Goblin Rings were instant charm breaks? You needed all of those pieces in place before charm soloing became viable. That's what you should be looking for, not "charm soloing guide 101 in the year 1999".

And I don't get the channeling argument. I played a wizard on live and I would root or nuke through getting hit all the time. You act like it was impossible. You just had to time your cast right.

And as I said to Lor, charm soloing has inherent risk built into it. It's not easy and you will die a lot. It's not a free path to 60 by any means. Same with bard kiting. Grouping is still the "easy mode" of leveling because it's the path with the least amount of deaths.

[starkind]

invis should break way more often too ) and everyone should want clicky invis pots :p and enchanters should just have a server wide random DT every 20-40 mins

[Jimjam]

People arguing encs play better now. Because they can solo.

Wrong. It is an mmorpg. Enchanters were better before because they grouped and roleplayed.

[Hyjalx]

This thread is on enchanters, and only 1 enchanter beat me to max AA's, period. It was a race and I remember it well. And it was specifically using charm.

Anyone who followed Club Fu or played on Bristlebane knows I was better geared than just about every INT caster on live until I retired at the end of PoP. I stacked CHA/STA/HP. That certainly played a part using charm as I helped lead Club Fu with Pouty. Nobody calls me out on this, because its fact.

Most of ya'll probably never played an enchanter or were geared enough to charm. But charm was working well before PoP. Again, we were charming hatchlings in NToV and Giants in Kael. Bristlebane's first AOW kill was done with like 20 charmed giants. This same strategy was used with Afterlife and FoH. I also specifically remember charming in Chardok as well.

To be honest, most of us were using 300 MHZ computers with 8 or 16mb of ram during classic and kunark on CRT monitors that made moving efficiently extremely difficult.

Find some old parts and slap them together from 1997-2000. Have a friend who's never played EQ gear an enchanter and attempt to charm with shit gear and let me know how it goes. Bet he/she dies and doesn't try again.

[Pulgasari]

invis should break way more often too ) and everyone should want clicky invis pots :p and enchanters should just have a server wide random DT every 20-40 mins

This is true

[unsunghero]

People arguing encs play better now. Because they can solo.

Wrong. It is an mmorpg. Enchanters were better before because they grouped and roleplayed.

Since we’re talking about grouping, let’s factor in server health and player preferences. 1/4 to 1/3 of the playerbase (including lots of casual scrubs like me) are playing 1 of a few strong solo classes because for whatever reason they aren’t wanting to group. Maybe it’s because when they play, groups aren’t available. Or maybe it’s because with their play setup they have to frequently afk. Or maybe they’re just anti-social and weird

All 3 aren’t going to be pleased to be hit with a few coder’s guess on how classic charming went based on a vocal minority of players on the forum

So what happens next? People either adapt, re-roll, or quit. If they re-roll and want to be a strong solo’er, they’ll be funneled into fewer choices and so class populations will continue to skew. And they’ll probably be more likely to quit the longer they were used to the old version. And if it was challenging to find groups when you played before, and some casual players in your level range just quit....Well that’s a bummer

[RecondoJoe]

People in classic weren't good.

If you could travel back in time you would probably get rejected by every elite guild. I personally remember how stringent the requirements were, and even WoWs top raiding guilds pale in comparison

Also it’s weird how you use the year 1999 specifically to speak for the EQ community as a whole

The game was only out for a month in 1999, and most people didn’t even know the game existed until 2001+

When most of us talk about what we remember we are talking about 2001-2004

Not the single month of 1999 where most servers didn’t even have enough players over level 10 to form a group in Unrest

[RecondoJoe]

Since we’re talking about grouping, let’s factor in server health and player preferences. 1/4 to 1/3 of the playerbase (including lots of casual scrubs like me) are playing 1 of a few strong solo classes because for whatever reason they aren’t wanting to group. Maybe it’s because when they play, groups aren’t available. Or maybe it’s because with their play setup they have to frequently afk. Or maybe they’re just anti-social and weird

All 3 aren’t going to be pleased to be hit with a few coder’s guess on how classic charming went based on a vocal minority of players on the forum

So what happens next? People either adapt, re-roll, or quit. If they re-roll and want to be a strong solo’er, they’ll be funneled into fewer choices and so class populations will continue to skew. And they’ll probably be more likely to quit the longer they were used to the old version. And if it was challenging to find groups when you played before, and some casual players in your level range just quit....Well that’s a bummer
Idk why but TLP is always got groups... I always try to go places to solo since I’m kind of twinked... and I can’t because people are always grouped everywhere and send me an invite the second I enter the zone lol

I kind of miss ZEM from p99...like leveling in Marus Seru is MIND NUMBING compared to Unrest, Splitpaw, Mistmoore etc..

In this regard TLP feels more classic because you legit just go to an outdoor zone and spam pull as many mobs as you can and the loot is terrible.. but dungeon leveling is much more fun on P99... but I think less popular on Aradune... idek though... there’s always groups at Fireplace in UR but somehow last night Ai ended up in Marus Seru for 9 hours and it was so boring

[RecondoJoe]

This thread is on enchanters, and only 1 enchanter beat me to max AA's, period. It was a race and I remember it well. And it was specifically using charm.

Anyone who followed Club Fu or played on Bristlebane knows I was better geared than just about every INT caster on live until I retired at the end of PoP. I stacked CHA/STA/HP. That certainly played a part using charm as I helped lead Club Fu with Pouty. Nobody calls me out on this, because its fact.

Most of ya'll probably never played an enchanter or were geared enough to charm. But charm was working well before PoP. Again, we were charming hatchlings in NToV and Giants in Kael. Bristlebane's first AOW kill was done with like 20 charmed giants. This same strategy was used with Afterlife and FoH. I also specifically remember charming in Chardok as well.

To be honest, most of us were using 300 MHZ computers with 8 or 16mb of ram during classic and kunark on CRT monitors that made moving efficiently extremely difficult.

Find some old parts and slap them together from 1997-2000. Have a friend who's never played EQ gear an enchanter and attempt to charm with shit gear and let me know how it goes. Bet he/she dies and doesn't try again.
Wait, are you actually comparing Luclin and PoP to P99?

Most of us were never around geared enchanters despite being in guilds that had NToV on ez farm...

And almost all of us remember enchanters on our servers doing something really cool with charm, but like charming giants in Kael, it was a massive feat and a large effort. Charm was not reliable. Did people do cool stuff with it? Of course. But no one was just rolling around solo charming 1-60 in 2 days.

When I first came to P99 and duod with Klide all the way to 50 and charm would break I would be like “well, time to let that one die” because this was always the case 20 years ago. I did actually have a lot of experience with charm 20 years ago, and knew it could be powerful, but it was established that once charm broke a mob was basically uncharmable, and this is why groups didn’t like using it. It was a super high risk, high reward ability. Now it’s super low risk, super high reward ability.

If they want to make a better classic server they should literally make a server where charm is nerfed. Whether you think it’s classic or not, it would make the way the game is played on that server more classic and balanced. I remember enchanter as the rare class who people always wanted for mez, haste and clarity. Not the dime a dozen god class.

[loramin]

This thread is on enchanters, and only 1 enchanter beat me to max AA's, period. It was a race and I remember it well. And it was specifically using charm.

Anyone who followed Club Fu or played on Bristlebane knows I was better geared than just about every INT caster on live until I retired at the end of PoP. I stacked CHA/STA/HP. That certainly played a part using charm as I helped lead Club Fu with Pouty. Nobody calls me out on this, because its fact.

Most of ya'll probably never played an enchanter or were geared enough to charm. But charm was working well before PoP. Again, we were charming hatchlings in NToV and Giants in Kael. Bristlebane's first AOW kill was done with like 20 charmed giants. This same strategy was used with Afterlife and FoH. I also specifically remember charming in Chardok as well.

To be honest, most of us were using 300 MHZ computers with 8 or 16mb of ram during classic and kunark on CRT monitors that made moving efficiently extremely difficult.

Find some old parts and slap them together from 1997-2000. Have a friend who's never played EQ gear an enchanter and attempt to charm with shit gear and let me know how it goes. Bet he/she dies and doesn't try again.

Again, we all agree charming existed in classic: no one is saying otherwise. But look, you and I were on the same server: do you remember Dome, a Druid in your guild (he also had an Enchanter named Domey)? Do you happen to know if Dome charm soloed his way to 60? I can tell you, he didn't.

Dome's most elite XPing strategy was to quad Barbarians/Dwarves (not knowing this, when I later inherited his account, I would get Dome killed several times by visiting Butcherblock/Everfrost :o). It wasn't because he didn't know how to play his character, and it certainly wasn't his Internet connection, because like many in Club Fu he played from a gaming center with a T1.

So, he had a good connection, he was in the most powerful and knowledgeable guild on the server, and yet he completely eschewed animal charming (which every Druid here will happily tell you is an amazing way to get XP) ... why?

I submit that it's not because charming didn't exist: as you noted Fu absolutely charmed. I'd also submit that it's not because he was a dummy or had a bad connection. The most logical explanation I can see is that, it was because charming wasn't as safe and as easy on live as it is here.

[RecondoJoe]

Also, when WoW classic launched a couple years ago, why didn’t we see massive player improvements? Shouldn’t we have expected to see players doing things they never did 17 years ago because obviously players 17 years ago were cavemen.

Yet we don’t. I wonder why...

[cd288]

If you could travel back in time you would probably get rejected by every elite guild. I personally remember how stringent the requirements were, and even WoWs top raiding guilds pale in comparison

Also it’s weird how you use the year 1999 specifically to speak for the EQ community as a whole

The game was only out for a month in 1999, and most people didn’t even know the game existed until 2001+

When most of us talk about what we remember we are talking about 2001-2004

Not the single month of 1999 where most servers didn’t even have enough players over level 10 to form a group in Unrest

What’re you talking about? Everquest came out in March 1999 you idiot

[ghost wolves]

Also, when WoW classic launched a couple years ago, why didn’t we see massive player improvements? Shouldn’t we have expected to see players doing things they never did 17 years ago because obviously players 17 years ago were cavemen.

Yet we don’t. I wonder why...

The world record for 1 - 60 in WoW Classic is 36 hours. People were speed running it as soon as it dropped and yes, they were doing PLENTY of things people didn't do 17 years ago. You can watch it on YouTube/Twitch. Search for Zeegers.

[ghost wolves]

Here is a comment from Kunark era talking about using the Goblin Gazughi Ring to break charm.

So here you go, people were charming in Kunark.

[starkind]

Simple reality after reviewing all the evidence on Charm:

1. It was too buggy to use until late classic era. This is already well proven and undeniable. All pets were garbage due to pathing issues, etc and charm was even worse.

2. Charming was done but only in outdoor zones where SoW and open areas allowed escaping certain death from interrupts. It was also used by high level Enchanters who couldn't mez giants and they were pissed about having to charm fire giants to CC them, not excited about it, and multiple posts mention the almost certain death from trying this. This was in a raid situation not soloing FGs or duoing, etc.

3. Channeling made charming almost impossible to do indoors or anywhere else you would be in combat while trying to cast. The stun spells did not mitigate this. IMO this is still the biggest missing component on P99 to "fix" charm.

4. Mob resists were much more intricate on live than on P99. Tons of posts calling out testing and specific mobs in relation to MR. For example, all undead, etc were known to have high MR that made them unsuitable to charm.

5. Charming planar mobs was never worthwhile. It was actually extremely difficult to even mez them working in teams with an MR debuffer, etc. The idea that Brad "The Vision" McQuaid would release Plane of Fear/Hate and then sit back watching Enchanters with 10 charmed pets clearing the whole zone in an hour is laughable. This is a guy who thought kiting mobs was too extreme and outside the vision.

6. There was no "knowledge gap." People were addicted to live EQ, a shit load more people were playing, tons of websites existed with information from beta, etc. Everyone knew how things were supposed to work they just didn't work that way. No shortage of posts from crying Enchanters about all kinds of bugs with their spells not just charm.

7. For group and raid charming something is wrong about aggro generation on P99. Classic era posts support the "untauntable" aggro Enchanters could generate with mez and charm that is nowhere close to how P99 works. We all remember Enchanters running around crying until they died as everyone tried desperately to control a mob that was on them. We already know Mez on P99 is bugged because it is supposed to only wipe aggro on the first cast. You can't recast mez on a mob to re-wipe aggro, it has to fade first then be reapplied. This is at least one big bug/difference on P99 that lets Enchanter have significantly less aggro compared to live.


That's about it. This is the middle ground no one wants to acknowledge it seems. Charming was used, mostly outdoors, and it was never used to clear planes or solo dungeons like it is on P99. It was rarely used in groups as an emergency spell when a wipe seemed certain. Widely regarded as something you'd cast in a group that had an equal chance of getting you killed vs saving the group. This is because of differences in channeling rate, mob MR, aggro, and bugs. Charming eventually reached "P99" status by Velious era and FOH guild posting confirms this and mentions the exact same reasons above. Velious introduced larger zones including dungeons where the Enchanter had room to run and escape melee while charming. Bugs were mostly fixed by this era.

P.S. Tons of evidence supports all the claims made above. It's pretty much undeniable that all of that is true as backed up by evidence, client de-compiles, in era posting, etc. There really shouldn't be anymore discussion on this because it's already proven charm on P99 is nowhere close to classic. Until at a minimum channeling gets fixed then P99 is easy mode. Enchanter just seems to abuse this the most.

I think you missed out what may be a big one - either mob attack could be too low or the by level worn AC caps are too high.

Yeah. Everyone should get hit harder, more. Avoidance from dodge, parry, riposte is off... (low) u could very well easily die from riposte on mobs over 50 if you swung fast, and didn't get heals. Damage should be way spikier. Channeling should be nerfed 70%. Root let you get away or gate at high lvl. Not win vs 3 mobs. Especially if a clothy, not a cleric.

People arguing encs play better now. Because they can solo.

Wrong. It is an mmorpg. Enchanters were better before because they grouped and roleplayed.

This, role players loved chanters to because of illusions :)

Idk why but TLP is always got groups... I always try to go places to solo since I’m kind of twinked... and I can’t because people are always grouped everywhere and send me an invite the second I enter the zone lol

I kind of miss ZEM from p99...like leveling in Marus Seru is MIND NUMBING compared to Unrest, Splitpaw, Mistmoore etc..

In this regard TLP feels more classic because you legit just go to an outdoor zone and spam pull as many mobs as you can and the loot is terrible.. but dungeon leveling is much more fun on P99... but I think less popular on Aradune... idek though... there’s always groups at Fireplace in UR but somehow last night Ai ended up in Marus Seru for 9 hours and it was so boring

Wait, are you actually comparing Luclin and PoP to P99?

Most of us were never around geared enchanters despite being in guilds that had NToV on ez farm...

And almost all of us remember enchanters on our servers doing something really cool with charm, but like charming giants in Kael, it was a massive feat and a large effort. Charm was not reliable. Did people do cool stuff with it? Of course. But no one was just rolling around solo charming 1-60 in 2 days.

When I first came to P99 and duod with Klide all the way to 50 and charm would break I would be like “well, time to let that one die” because this was always the case 20 years ago. I did actually have a lot of experience with charm 20 years ago, and knew it could be powerful, but it was established that once charm broke a mob was basically uncharmable, and this is why groups didn’t like using it. It was a super high risk, high reward ability. Now it’s super low risk, super high reward ability.

If they want to make a better classic server they should literally make a server where charm is nerfed. Whether you think it’s classic or not, it would make the way the game is played on that server more classic and balanced. I remember enchanter as the rare class who people always wanted for mez, haste and clarity. Not the dime a dozen god class.

This server is supposed to be classic and hard. If you (not you RecondoJoe) want easy mode go play live, PeQ, or TakP. If you're crazy and want to solo play a necromancer or shm, or go box on live and PeQ or TakP.

If you want some nostalgia, come here and get face wrecked by 140 damage triple attacks and stuns and intereupts x 3 mobs on a 1200 hp clothy where planar mobs resist, memblur/mez is classic, and charm is so agro, you kill the pets when they break.

Blurr is certainly broken on atone. My cleric would not get blurs without 10-20 casts.

Maybe make mobs remember all their agro/charms if they re-agro. Would make charm agro seem more normal...

I don't see why some other group can't make a classic custom no boxing ez server with luclin/pop mechanics. For the kids here to go solo on.

Anyway. I'm cool. Not gonna be upset if it never gets fixed. But I'm missing my nostalgia :p

Honestly think only about 75 players on this project actually played in 99. Most of us are shaking our heads like huhhhh when we see ppl pulling at high lvl in zones higher than MM. High end MM should be a little bit harder too.

Remember it's the journey and friends, not the MR and resistance checks and ability to farm 10kpp or make 60 lvl 60 alts on through away accounts.

Imo if the right changes were made. Server pop would go up to 2k and yall would see a ton more melees running around.

[starkind]

140 damage triple attacks and stuns and intereupts x 3 mobs

Is 1,260 damage you aren't channeling through like 9 hits in two seconds.

Clicking GCD reset doesn't save u. Getting an aoe stun may buy u an AoE mez that might resist or allow you to gate.

Brad Bless. <3

[starkind]

Amygdalan warrior
Damage per hit: 38 - 144


Imo mobs hit harder, and clothies got facewrecked way harder than what's in most data grabs and most people's logs. Especially before luclin.

I remember two combat revamps, and being absolutely wreck by mage pets, but after one of the revamps, even tho pets still hit pretty hard my sk could take on a blue pet, but it took everything.

[bwe]

If you look at an MRI from an enchanter player in 1999 you'll see that their brain is about half as big as an enchanter player in 2021

[ghost wolves]

Most '99 enchanters got charm at 12, tried it, charm broke in like 30 seconds because it was too high a mob / they had terrible charisma so they never touched it again.

They didn't even think about charm soloing as an option because whose gonna save them when charm breaks? They didn't know about GCD clickies. Plus everyone wanted them in groups anyway, so why bother?

It's really not hard to figure out why charm wasn't a thing in an era where people turned using the keyboard, couldn't see full screen, were on 28.8 modems that would disconnect, actually used the /roleplay tag seriously, had no wiki to consolidate information, were unaware of GCD clicky items, printed out zone maps, and thought hybrids were the best classes in the game.

[Danth]

Honestly think only about 75 players on this project actually played in 99.

...And some of that bunch are millennials who were little kids when EQ came out (hence bad at games) and forget that some of us were grown adults who were very much more capable. It's amusing watching the issues change but the claims stay the same. We had basically these same threads with things like melee combat bind, invis pulling, chardok AE, you name it. Heck, when P99 first opened and charm was lasting full duration every time (remember that?) of course you had the Enchanters swearing up and down that was totally normal. Broken whirl was entirely legit too, ench's only didn't use it back then because they were too stupid obviously, etc etc. What can you say?

That being said after 11+ years here I can't motivate much "care" anymore. I ain't going to disappear tomorrow, but I've definitely been watching my own activity gradually wind down the past few years. Even if they fix it now, probably too late to do ME much good anymore. That ship's more or less sailed. I think of P99 as its own game, not so much as an emulation of anything, anymore.

Danth

[bwe]

Most '99 enchanters got charm at 12, tried it, charm broke in like 30 seconds because it was too high a mob / they had terrible charisma so they never touched it again.

They didn't even think about charm soloing as an option because whose gonna save them when charm breaks? They didn't know about GCD clickies. Plus everyone wanted them in groups anyway, so why bother?

It's really not hard to figure out why charm wasn't a thing in an era where people turned using the keyboard, couldn't see full screen, were on 28.8 modems that would disconnect, actually used the /roleplay tag seriously, had no wiki to consolidate information, were unaware of GCD clicky items, printed out zone maps, and thought hybrids were the best classes in the game.

Look at this guy's full sized brain, nothing like those morons in 1999

[RecondoJoe]

The world record for 1 - 60 in WoW Classic is 36 hours. People were speed running it as soon as it dropped and yes, they were doing PLENTY of things people didn't do 17 years ago. You can watch it on YouTube/Twitch. Search for Zeegers.

https://www.furiouspaul.com/wow/

This is nothing new and was happening when WoW was BRAND NEW

I remember that was one of the biggest complaints about WoW... people who played eq leveled to 60 in a week or two and then there was nothing to do...the end game wasn’t even in the game at launch

[RecondoJoe]

Honestly think only about 75 players on this project actually played in 99.

I was one of the few who was fortunate enough to get to play it....

I had been wanting to play Ultimate Online since I first saw it in a Rollings Stone magazine... it sounded amazing.. there was one kid at school who played it... the rest of us couldn’t convince their parents to let them...

Well one day my best friend was excited because EverQuest was supposed to come in the mail.. he pre ordered it from the mall... I was confused because I never heard of it. When he explained it was like Ultima... I was like IDK it sounds dumb...

Well, once he got it he just stopped playing Starcraft altogether... which annoyed me. I spent the night with him, and watched him play this game and I thought it was the dumbest game I had ever seen in my entire life. He was running around a swamp killing tadpoles over and over again and I didn’t get it... it felt like a really shitty “multiplayer” game...

I just played Starcraft all night while he played EQ, then he finally passed out so I decided to try EQ... I was immediately fascinated by the different races, classes, religions etc. I didn’t understand what a Cleric was but it sounded super boring. I thought Monks were Catholic monks too.. and wondered why anyone would play either of these stupid classes.

I ultimately made a rogue because I didn’t know what abilities like dodge and pick pocket and backstab would do... I thought I could actually backstab my friends or pick pocket their loot or press dodge to dodge spells.... ended up staying up all night making new characters...

One thing I think people forget is that EQ graphics at the time were groundbreaking.. it felt like real life compared to other games of that time period, especially with thunder and night time...

My parents still wouldn’t let me get the game until my dad was watching his stock channel and one of the analysts on there mentioned the game on the show, and he rushed out and got me the game got really into watching me play and would get me the latest expacs and buy me new computers over time as new expacs launched and I needed better hardware.

I wasn’t high level in 1999 though. I had a level 36 rogue before Kunark came out and I don’t even remember what zones I leveled in to get that high in retro..

But I spent many hours playing the game at a much higher level from 2000-2004 and always remember charm being that ability that when it worked was amazing, but never being reliable. Everyone knew Enchanters used charisma though, that’s why they always had a crude stein and ishva robe lol...

I also remember as a rogue/monk player getting destroyed by my own dual wield frequently... I’ve never experienced or witnessed this on p99 or TLP ... can remember being a bitter rogue getting out DPSd by warriors who had wurmslayers while my hip got deleted as I did less damage but swung 5-6x as often

[starkind]

...And some of that bunch are millennials who were little kids when EQ came out (hence bad at games) and forget that some of us were grown adults who were very much more capable. It's amusing watching the issues change but the claims stay the same. We had basically these same threads with things like melee combat bind, invis pulling, chardok AE, you name it. Heck, when P99 first opened and charm was lasting full duration every time (remember that?) of course you had the Enchanters swearing up and down that was totally normal. Broken whirl was entirely legit too, ench's only didn't use it back then because they were too stupid obviously, etc etc. What can you say?

That being said after 11+ years here I can't motivate much "care" anymore. I ain't going to disappear tomorrow, but I've definitely been watching my own activity gradually wind down the past few years. Even if they fix it now, probably too late to do ME much good anymore. That ship's more or less sailed. I think of P99 as its own game, not so much as an emulation of anything, anymore.

Danth

Yeah, and it's great, and I still miss classic, vanilla EQ. Because I want to live those memories real time, do it differently now. And I know my memories will never match reality, and so this place is more like a memory of that game, it's great to revisit!

I was one of the few who was fortunate enough to get to play it....

I had been wanting to play Ultimate Online since I first saw it in a Rollings Stone magazine... it sounded amazing.. there was one kid at school who played it... the rest of us couldn’t convince their parents to let them...

Well one day my best friend was excited because EverQuest was supposed to come in the mail.. he pre ordered it from the mall... I was confused because I never heard of it. When he explained it was like Ultima... I was like IDK it sounds dumb...

Well, once he got it he just stopped playing Starcraft altogether... which annoyed me. I spent the night with him, and watched him play this game and I thought it was the dumbest game I had ever seen in my entire life. He was running around a swamp killing tadpoles over and over again and I didn’t get it... it felt like a really shitty “multiplayer” game...

I just played Starcraft all night while he played EQ, then he finally passed out so I decided to try EQ... I was immediately fascinated by the different races, classes, religions etc. I didn’t understand what a Cleric was but it sounded super boring. I thought Monks were Catholic monks too.. and wondered why anyone would play either of these stupid classes.

I ultimately made a rogue because I didn’t know what abilities like dodge and pick pocket and backstab would do... I thought I could actually backstab my friends or pick pocket their loot or press dodge to dodge spells.... ended up staying up all night making new characters...

One thing I think people forget is that EQ graphics at the time were groundbreaking.. it felt like real life compared to other games of that time period, especially with thunder and night time...

My parents still wouldn’t let me get the game until my dad was watching his stock channel and one of the analysts on there mentioned the game on the show, and he rushed out and got me the game got really into watching me play and would get me the latest expacs and buy me new computers over time as new expacs launched and I needed better hardware.

I wasn’t high level in 1999 though. I had a level 36 rogue before Kunark came out and I don’t even remember what zones I leveled in to get that high in retro..

But I spent many hours playing the game at a much higher level from 2000-2004 and always remember charm being that ability that when it worked was amazing, but never being reliable. Everyone knew Enchanters used charisma though, that’s why they always had a crude stein and ishva robe lol...

I also remember as a rogue/monk player getting destroyed by my own dual wield frequently... I’ve never experienced or witnessed this on p99 or TLP ... can remember being a bitter rogue getting out DPSd by warriors who had wurmslayers while my hip got deleted as I did less damage but swung 5-6x as often

Yeah hahaha, wurmies were the raaaage when they came out my friend who was hardcore into farming on his necro immediately made a warrior twink. They were the coolest.

Objectively froglock tads are way cooler than regular moss snakes. Looking forward to charming some snakes in blackburrow though!

I think I spent as much time on casters realm and reading about the game as playing it, was a bit older, but not by much.

[UrkTheSlayer]

Will one of you two shit posters please bump https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=384480 back to the top instead of this cashed out bullshit?

[Sadre]

Nah, everyone was just bad at enchanter on live + 10 fps and 350 ping

Move to resolved.

It was strictly practical. A group had to not go ld or lag out to hold a camp or not wipe.

Charming in the dial-up era is like what Mason Verger concluded regarding cutting his face off:It might sound like a good idea, but it isn't

resolved, really. I often played with Aussies even though I was EST. Corpse runs were a hassle and Aussies are untrustworthy, so "caution" was the word.

[azxten]

...And some of that bunch are millennials who were little kids when EQ came out (hence bad at games) and forget that some of us were grown adults who were very much more capable. It's amusing watching the issues change but the claims stay the same. We had basically these same threads with things like melee combat bind, invis pulling, chardok AE, you name it. Heck, when P99 first opened and charm was lasting full duration every time (remember that?) of course you had the Enchanters swearing up and down that was totally normal. Broken whirl was entirely legit too, ench's only didn't use it back then because they were too stupid obviously, etc etc. What can you say?

That being said after 11+ years here I can't motivate much "care" anymore. I ain't going to disappear tomorrow, but I've definitely been watching my own activity gradually wind down the past few years. Even if they fix it now, probably too late to do ME much good anymore. That ship's more or less sailed. I think of P99 as its own game, not so much as an emulation of anything, anymore.

Danth

Quality post, I'm in the same boat. P99 has become a custom EQEmu server and is no longer attempting to recreate classic.

Channeling proves this to me. Proof provided that P99 channeling is obscenely far away from classic values and the staff just lets the bug report fade away with not even a single comment. We put tons of work into researching bugs and figuring things out and it just sits there. Devs occasionally making a "fixed pending update" response to some trivial bullshit bug and leaving the major issues to fester unaddressed.

There is no point hearing endless morons try to justify how it's just slow computers or player knowledge that explains how channeling rates at level 1 on P99 are 50-70% successful compared to 10% on live. Such a core mechanic like this being overlooked shows no one is interested in classic EQ anymore.

Classic EQ is too hard and takes too much time to get raid pixels so we'll just smooth some of these rough edges so the raid scene can be a boring bottlenecked cluster fuck that no one enjoys but is fully available to even the dumbest greenest newb to EQ after a couple weeks of playing. WoW players don't like a 10% chance to cast a spell in combat when they start, they won't play if we fix it.

[azxten]

Ten years I've played here, donated money, time, my reverse engineered code is in the files you download, etc... and can't even get a single response about channeling rates from a dev.

I'm done for awhile again. Fuck this.

[cd288]

Quality post, I'm in the same boat. P99 has become a custom EQEmu server and is no longer attempting to recreate classic.

Channeling proves this to me. Proof provided that P99 channeling is obscenely far away from classic values and the staff just lets the bug report fade away with not even a single comment. We put tons of work into researching bugs and figuring things out and it just sits there. Devs occasionally making a "fixed pending update" response to some trivial bullshit bug and leaving the major issues to fester unaddressed.

There is no point hearing endless morons try to justify how it's just slow computers or player knowledge that explains how channeling rates at level 1 on P99 are 50-70% successful compared to 10% on live. Such a core mechanic like this being overlooked shows no one is interested in classic EQ anymore.

Classic EQ is too hard and takes too much time to get raid pixels so we'll just smooth some of these rough edges so the raid scene can be a boring bottlenecked cluster fuck that no one enjoys but is fully available to even the dumbest greenest newb to EQ after a couple weeks of playing. WoW players don't like a 10% chance to cast a spell in combat when they start, they won't play if we fix it.

I believe the staff has said that channeling is something to do with the client code or something like that and not something that’s easily fixable at all. So go on keep criticizing them for something they can’t do anything about.

At any rate if you dislike P99 so much go play another server. Not like you contribute much positive here

[Tethler]

Druid charm was terrible too. I wasn't able to charm with any degree of success until PoP when I solo'd the werewolf camp in Plane of Nightmare for piles and piles of diamonds and blue diamonds that dropped there.

[starkind]

eehh, I am sorry to bring up these feels for ya'll.

really its fine

pros and cons ppl

its different, not 'bad'

personally, if i couldnt fix channeling, i'd thro a bandaid on the heavily abused spells like charm idk, 3x cast time, or like 70% resist rate for the lolz (because that'd be accurate! to 'feels') but thats custom and wouldnt want it to stay that way

[Jimjam]

Could just boost the chance to interrupt on hit. Would be an unclassic nerf on corner tanked casting but could make channeling more classic in most other situations.

[RecondoJoe]

Druid charm was terrible too. I wasn't able to charm with any degree of success until PoP when I solo'd the werewolf camp in Plane of Nightmare for piles and piles of diamonds and blue diamonds that dropped there.

[Twochain]

Wow I think Hyjal really proved me right

The issue wasn't with the spells. The issue was with Knowledge and computer limitations.

IDK about you guys, but i was literally playing everquest with less than 10 fps sometimes on live. And laggy internet. Meaning if the pet broke, I hardly had time to react before it was beating me.

LET ALONE i can't remember a SINGLE enchanter on live who used aoe stun in my groups. Meaning, the most likely scenario of enchanters trying to recharm was just tanking it until the spell landed. And were they even using Tash?

[starkind]

what does an mri of a starkind look like?

[Delekhan]

Wow I think Hyjal really proved me right

The issue wasn't with the spells. The issue was with Knowledge and computer limitations.

IDK about you guys, but i was literally playing everquest with less than 10 fps sometimes on live. And laggy internet. Meaning if the pet broke, I hardly had time to react before it was beating me.

LET ALONE i can't remember a SINGLE enchanter on live who used aoe stun in my groups. Meaning, the most likely scenario of enchanters trying to recharm was just tanking it until the spell landed. And were they even using Tash?

LOL chanters Tashed in classic, and yes they stunned all the time. Chanters knew how to play their class. I know this comes at a shock, but classic players that were adults at the time actually did have decent computers and broadband during this Era. Not all classic everquest players were 12 year olds, you know.

[bwe]

Wow I think Hyjal really proved me right

The issue wasn't with the spells. The issue was with Knowledge and computer limitations.

IDK about you guys, but i was literally playing everquest with less than 10 fps sometimes on live. And laggy internet. Meaning if the pet broke, I hardly had time to react before it was beating me.

LET ALONE i can't remember a SINGLE enchanter on live who used aoe stun in my groups. Meaning, the most likely scenario of enchanters trying to recharm was just tanking it until the spell landed. And were they even using Tash?

Whoa this guy's brain is fully intact too

[Delekhan]

An average gamer PC in 1999-2000:

Pentium 2 300 or better (Even Pentium 3 was out by then)
3DFX Voodoo 2 (and some cheap 2d card) or a Geforce 256 later in 1999
7200 RPM Hard drive
256MB RAM
Cable/DSL internet (widely available at this point in urban/suburban areas)

The above would run EQ at 1024x768 at 60fps, no problem.

If you did not have this because you were too young and were using a hand-me down PC and were a kid at the time, that's understandable, but that's what gamer rigs looked like back then and gamers played EQ. Enough with the hardware nonsense, please. This game ran just fine on hardware at the time.

[starkind]

3DFX Voodoo 2 (and some cheap 2d card) or a Geforce 256 later in 1999.

Glide...!

[Bhairava]

no dont you get it everyone played with 5fps and had a spotty 56k modem while their mom beat them with a slipper

enchants were just super mega op classically and nobody ever noticed until now even the developers of the game itself

[Samaritan]

See, I think ENCHANTERS have done some good things for us! I really do. And if you don't believe ENCHANTERS have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight, take all your ARMOR, all your WEAPONS and all your SPELLS and burn 'em.
'Cause you know what? The PLAYERS who made all that great GEAR that's enhanced your lives throughout the years?

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreal f'n high on ENCHANTERS.

[starkind]

wtf? man i never got shit from enchanters

[Jibartik]

Again, we all agree charming existed in classic: no one is saying otherwise. But look, you and I were on the same server: do you remember Dome, a Druid in your guild (he also had an Enchanter named Domey)? Do you happen to know if Dome charm soloed his way to 60? I can tell you, he didn't.

Dome's most elite XPing strategy was to quad Barbarians/Dwarves (not knowing this, when I later inherited his account, I would get Dome killed several times by visiting Butcherblock/Everfrost :o). It wasn't because he didn't know how to play his character, and it certainly wasn't his Internet connection, because like many in Club Fu he played from a gaming center with a T1.

So, he had a good connection, he was in the most powerful and knowledgeable guild on the server, and yet he completely eschewed animal charming (which every Druid here will happily tell you is an amazing way to get XP) ... why?

I submit that it's not because charming didn't exist: as you noted Fu absolutely charmed. I'd also submit that it's not because he was a dummy or had a bad connection. The most logical explanation I can see is that, it was because charming wasn't as safe and as easy on live as it is here.

Your line of reasoning is that because someone knows how to charm with an in chanter that means that if they level of drew it they’re definitely going to go to the bottom of a dragon dungeon and charm to giant polar bears.

That is such a false equivalency.

[loramin]

Your line of reasoning is that because someone knows how to charm with an in chanter that means that if they level of drew it they’re definitely going to go to the bottom of a dragon dungeon and charm to giant polar bears.

That is such a false equivalency.

You don't need to do the pits to animal charm. There's all the Karans, Everfrost, hordes of Alligators in Cazic Thule, etc.

[d3r14k]

You don't need to do the pits to animal charm. There's all the Karans, Everfrost, hordes of Alligators in Cazic Thule, etc.

I am ashamed to admit I played a druid in 1999 / 2000 as a young kiddo and did not know druids could charm until I played on P99 nearly 15 years later. Having said that, charming on a druid is arguably more fun than charming on an enchanter because you got all the safety nets like ensnare and being able to heal yourself.

It's a shame there aren't more spots for druids to do this, you really gotta be in a niche spot to find a decent animal pet. Kedge fish, Sol B bats are a couple more good spots I suppose.

[starkind]

none of u would be doing bear pits if i didnt spill the beans on them in '14

[Fragged]

The fatcat top 1% did, and it was amazing <3

[Jibartik]

You don't need to do the pits to animal charm. There's all the Karans, Everfrost, hordes of Alligators in Cazic Thule, etc.

Why would I do that when I can just quad them?

I mean I’ve level 4 Chantres and 2 druids to 60 and the druid and I’ve never charmed with a Druid.

The bear pits offer a unique experience bonus that make them far superior to all of the things that you listed and all the things you listed I might as well just quad instead of charming trying to find other creatures and wasting all that time.