Green 2.0 advice

[Videri]

Green 2.0 advice for would-be raiders, nostalgia seekers, and the content-curious (a work in progress - feel free to add your input and maybe I'll turn this into a Wiki article or something)

Things to watch out for on future Project 1999 timeline servers. Warnings to the casual and hardcore alike. A crystal ball of what might be in our future on the next server.


————————————————————
CLASSIC / VANILLA / PRE-KUNARK
————————————————————

—Launch era—

Crowded newbie zones
Expect to camp the spawn point of a decaying skeleton while 99 other people rush around KSing each other.

Legacy camps: Manastone, Guise of the Deceiver, Rubicite Breastplate, Drelzna JBoots
There will be 10-20 players standing at these camps around the clock. Each character will have to wait 3-5 days to get their item. To accomplish this, groups of players will take turns on a single character. The list mechanic allows a 15-minute grace period in case of connection loss. This allows one player to camp out and another player to log in to the same character. Players will take shifts in this way to keep that character on the /list for long enough to get the item. If you cannot do this or are not willing to share account info, you may not be able to get these items. These camps were camped by 10-20 people 24/7 from the moment it was possible to camp them until the moment they were removed from the game.

My druid Naala spent 87 hours on the manastone list. Each night, one of my friends would play her for 6 hours so I could sleep. I would keep my laptop with me the other 18 hours of every day for 4 and a half days. That’s how you get a manastone. If you can’t do that, you won’t be able to camp a manastone. You can farm a lot of plat and buy one.

—Plane of Fear—

Planar rotations
Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Fear during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can.

Plane of Fear legacy items
Lustrous Russet armor, the legacy item Plane of Fear armor, will be farmed assiduously by those who know about it. It is the same as Indicolite armor (the later Plane of Hate warrior armor), but it is usable by all plate and chain classes. Expect clerics and shamans wearing Lustrous Russet Boots, rogues wearing Lustrous Russet Breastplate, bards wearing Lustrous Russet Bracer, and more.

Spinechiller Spiders drop the Cryosilk Robe, but only until Plane of Hate comes out. In later eras, this robe is trash, but it looks really good.

Fear Golems 1.0
Initially, Fright, Dread, and Terror don’t drop anything at all. They also don’t death touch or have any AEs. One of them blinds the tank (surprise!). They are just large golems with no loot table.

—Plane of Hate—

Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Hate during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can. The level cap is still 50, so it’s quite difficult. Expect to wipe sometimes.

—Plane of Sky—

The Ishva Mal for Summon Corpse
It was announced that Plane of Sky would be “competitive” for the first two weeks. As the release date of Plane of Sky approached, experienced players realized Summon Corpse might be necessary to quickly progress a whole guild through Plane of Sky (get some players keyed to the next island, have other players die on purpose and summon their corpses to the next island, and rez them).

As soon as The Ishva Mal was added to the game, <Seal Team> began permanently camping it, rotating in shifts and holding the camp indefinitely. They did not keep a camp list. Other players asked to camp the Ishva Mal after them, but they did not respond to /tells. They held the camp for many days. Other guilds were incensed.

Players petitioned them until finally the GMs implemented a /list mechanic for the Ishva Mal. Only necromancers could join the /list. Due to the 36-hour spawn time of the Ishva Mal, necromancers had to stay at the camp for hours or days at a time. Most necromancers did not bother.

“Competitive Sky” did not end up happening. The guilds quickly agreed on a weekly rotation. Also, it turned out nobody used Summon Corpse that much to advance in Plane of Sky. So the round-the-clock camping, the drama and rage, the petitioning, and the /list torture was all for nothing. the end

Plane of Sky while the level cap is 50 is a form of torture
During this era, when the level cap was 50, it took normal raid guilds 8-12 hours to clear Plane of Sky. Supposedly Seal Team would do Plane of Sky using almost exclusively mages, something like 20-30 mages, and that worked better when the level cap was 50.

--
Please post your own advice for players next server. Please reply with anything I missed or got wrong. I'll post my Kunark notes later.

[nilzark]

Very depressing. Thank you.

[eqravenprince]

Good thing I don't care about most of that stuff. And the people that do care already know.

[loramin]

Legacy camps: Manastone, Guise of the Deceiver, Rubicite Breastplate, Drelzna JBoots
There will be 10-20 players standing at these camps around the clock. Each character will have to wait 3-5 days to get their item. To accomplish this, groups of players will take turns on a single character. The list mechanic allows a 15-minute grace period in case of connection loss. This allows one player to camp out and another player to log in to the same character. Players will take shifts in this way to keep that character on the /list for long enough to get the item. If you cannot do this or are not willing to share account info, you may not be able to get these items. These camps were camped by 10-20 people 24/7 from the moment it was possible to camp them until the moment they were removed from the game.

My druid Naala spent 87 hours on the manastone list. Each night, one of my friends would play her for 6 hours so I could sleep. I would keep my laptop with me the other 18 hours of every day for 4 and a half days. That’s how you get a manastone. If you can’t do that, you won’t be able to camp a manastone. You can farm a lot of plat and buy one.

Let's just hope Green 2.0 comes with /list 2.0 (ie. random lists instead of "staying awake or trading accounts for days" lists).

The goal of this place (and Green in particular) is to be classic right? There's nothing classic about the above, but it's completely classic to have a random chance at a popular item.

[Coridan]

"Also, it turned out nobody used Summon Corpse that much to advance in Plane of Sky."

Huh? Guilds were using it a ton until they could get everyone keyed, and even later on to help people who came late or whatever hop islands.

[Heavenzoutcast]

When is 2.0 expected to drop? To late to start on green now, rather wait for the new one.

[Videri]

Very depressing. Thank you.

Oops. It was supposed to be a road map with some warning signs, but now that I read it, it kind of seems like a big turn-off. I'll adjust the framing to be more "realist" and less "dystopian." I'll add some more "make sure to see this cool thing during this era" type stuff.

[Videri]

When is 2.0 expected to drop? To late to start on green now, rather wait for the new one.

There has been no official word on these forums since the announcement of Green itself back in fall 2019. If the Devs/GMs have said anything, it would have been in the P99 public Discord server or the Blue server Discord server, neither of which I read.

The announcement said "no sooner than 6 months after the last patch of Velious." So 9-12 months at the soonest.

[Videri]

Huh? Guilds were using it a ton until they could get everyone keyed, and even later on to help people who came late or whatever hop islands.

Oh. Going purely off memory here, not even looking at logs or anything. Thanks. I'll correct that if I do another draft of this. Also, hi Jersiey.

[Sizar]

No Legacy Items. Period.

[eqravenprince]

I really like the idea of a new server with all the way to Velious unlocked and all the patches.

[sajbert]

Can also add that with the ZEM changes players moved away from grouping and did solo camping to a larger extent. With the high playercounts and low amount of solo locations it was often difficult to find a spot to level.

[Chortles Snortles]

thank god cracked staffs weren't /list
phew

[Ooloo]

Random /list winner would be cool if there was some kind of failsafe for somebody just getting really unlucky. Like they've been there 20 hours and all these people who keep showing up after them keep winning, just by sheer bad luck.

Random list would probably make the lines longer too because people would be counting on getting lucky, whereas before if they saw 12 people in line they just wouldn't try.

[sajbert]

Random /list winner would be cool if there was some kind of failsafe for somebody just getting really unlucky. Like they've been there 20 hours and all these people who keep showing up after them keep winning, just by sheer bad luck.

Random list would probably make the lines longer too because people would be counting on getting lucky, whereas before if they saw 12 people in line they just wouldn't try.

There are a lot of alternative solutions that would both work and respect players health. The p99 community is pretty old, the chance of DVT and pulmonary embolism is pretty relevant when discussing 4 day camps.

The discussion has been done to death already however.

[Ooloo]

Well I mean to be fair that's really a risk of playing any game or just being a big lazy loser in general. List camps only really require you to be there every 15 min. Plenty of time to get up and walk to the store for funyuns

[Ooloo]

Also I think OP slightly overstated how bad those camps were. Maybe not manastone, but I was able to get a guise on two characters, both in about 8 hours each give or take an hour roughly. There were like 4 or 5 people in line total. This was probably about a month before they were taken out.

[Coridan]

I think it'd be neat if the next server used FV rules but limiting one character per account would be irrelevant unless they could also limit one account per IP or something.

Would also eliminate things like tunnel toons.

[Zalora]

I'm out of the loop. When is Green 2.0 going to be released?

[Videri]

I'm out of the loop. When is Green 2.0 going to be released?

Nobody knows. There has been no announcement. You can just look at News and Announcements (https://www.project1999.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=11).

[Tenderizer]

ALL WRONG.

Green will switch to a period correct pvp server timeline.

to save p99 money on multiple servers green will flip flop every cycle PVE to PVP, PVP to PVE and the cycle will go on.......

So you may be doing the exact same thing OP posted but on a red server next time around

[Chortles Snortles]

you actually might be right that next green cycle is pvp progression server

[PatChapp]

you actually might be right that next green cycle is pvp progression server

This is big dream stuff. I can't wait to get ganked over a cracked staff skele fte

[eqravenprince]

ALL WRONG.

Green will switch to a period correct pvp server timeline.

to save p99 money on multiple servers green will flip flop every cycle PVE to PVP, PVP to PVE and the cycle will go on.......

So you may be doing the exact same thing OP posted but on a red server next time around

Pvp sucks, why waste time and money on that. Need to pass the drugs around if you think that's going to happen.

[Tenderizer]

Pvp sucks, why waste time and money on that. Need to pass the drugs around if you think that's going to happen.

why not? pve was done why not pvp? I hate everquest pvp but it only makes sense to switch ever 3-4 years between them. hell, id even try a red progression if it had a population spike and a player base investment like greeen did.

drugs are bad m'kay i dont poison my body

[Larken]

Green 2.0 advice for would-be raiders, nostalgia seekers, and the content-curious (a work in progress - feel free to add your input and maybe I'll turn this into a Wiki article or something)

Things to watch out for on future Project 1999 timeline servers. Warnings to the casual and hardcore alike. A crystal ball of what might be in our future on the next server.


————————————————————
CLASSIC / VANILLA / PRE-KUNARK
————————————————————

—Launch era—

Crowded newbie zones
Expect to camp the spawn point of a decaying skeleton while 99 other people rush around KSing each other.

Legacy camps: Manastone, Guise of the Deceiver, Rubicite Breastplate, Drelzna JBoots
There will be 10-20 players standing at these camps around the clock. Each character will have to wait 3-5 days to get their item. To accomplish this, groups of players will take turns on a single character. The list mechanic allows a 15-minute grace period in case of connection loss. This allows one player to camp out and another player to log in to the same character. Players will take shifts in this way to keep that character on the /list for long enough to get the item. If you cannot do this or are not willing to share account info, you may not be able to get these items. These camps were camped by 10-20 people 24/7 from the moment it was possible to camp them until the moment they were removed from the game.

My druid Naala spent 87 hours on the manastone list. Each night, one of my friends would play her for 6 hours so I could sleep. I would keep my laptop with me the other 18 hours of every day for 4 and a half days. That’s how you get a manastone. If you can’t do that, you won’t be able to camp a manastone. You can farm a lot of plat and buy one.

—Plane of Fear—

Planar rotations
Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Fear during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can.

Plane of Fear legacy items
Lustrous Russet armor, the legacy item Plane of Fear armor, will be farmed assiduously by those who know about it. It is the same as Indicolite armor (the later Plane of Hate warrior armor), but it is usable by all plate and chain classes. Expect clerics and shamans wearing Lustrous Russet Boots, rogues wearing Lustrous Russet Breastplate, bards wearing Lustrous Russet Bracer, and more.

Spinechiller Spiders drop the Cryosilk Robe, but only until Plane of Hate comes out. In later eras, this robe is trash, but it looks really good.

Fear Golems 1.0
Initially, Fright, Dread, and Terror don’t drop anything at all. They also don’t death touch or have any AEs. One of them blinds the tank (surprise!). They are just large golems with no loot table.

—Plane of Hate—

Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Hate during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can. The level cap is still 50, so it’s quite difficult. Expect to wipe sometimes.

—Plane of Sky—

The Ishva Mal for Summon Corpse
It was announced that Plane of Sky would be “competitive” for the first two weeks. As the release date of Plane of Sky approached, experienced players realized Summon Corpse might be necessary to quickly progress a whole guild through Plane of Sky (get some players keyed to the next island, have other players die on purpose and summon their corpses to the next island, and rez them).

As soon as The Ishva Mal was added to the game, <Seal Team> began permanently camping it, rotating in shifts and holding the camp indefinitely. They did not keep a camp list. Other players asked to camp the Ishva Mal after them, but they did not respond to /tells. They held the camp for many days. Other guilds were incensed.

Players petitioned them until finally the GMs implemented a /list mechanic for the Ishva Mal. Only necromancers could join the /list. Due to the 36-hour spawn time of the Ishva Mal, necromancers had to stay at the camp for hours or days at a time. Most necromancers did not bother.

“Competitive Sky” did not end up happening. The guilds quickly agreed on a weekly rotation. Also, it turned out nobody used Summon Corpse that much to advance in Plane of Sky. So the round-the-clock camping, the drama and rage, the petitioning, and the /list torture was all for nothing. the end

Plane of Sky while the level cap is 50 is a form of torture
During this era, when the level cap was 50, it took normal raid guilds 8-12 hours to clear Plane of Sky. Supposedly Seal Team would do Plane of Sky using almost exclusively mages, something like 20-30 mages, and that worked better when the level cap was 50.

--
Please post your own advice for players next server. Please reply with anything I missed or got wrong. I'll post my Kunark notes later.


PvP flag all raid zones and high value item camps. Is it perfect? Of course not, but in the end it's about the good outweighing the bad. I think doing it like this would be more positive than negative if you sum everything up.

No more 86 hour camps (talk about deranged) and no more vitriolic "Lawyer PvP" - which is far more damaging for everyone involved than just normal pvp, not to mention the time wasted for everyone, including GM's trying to police it all.

My assessment is that despite the flaws of EQ pvp, it would still be a net positive to turn pvp on in above mentioned instances. At least think about it.

[PatChapp]

PvP flag all raid zones and high value item camps. Is it perfect? Of course not, but in the end it's about the good outweighing the bad. I think doing it like this would be more positive than negative if you sum everything up.

No more 86 hour camps (talk about deranged) and no more vitriolic "Lawyer PvP" - which is far more damaging for everyone involved than just normal pvp, not to mention the time wasted for everyone, including GM's trying to police it all.

My assessment is that despite the flaws of EQ pvp, it would still be a net positive to turn pvp on in above mentioned instances. At least think about it.
Other than being super griefy, eq pvp can be pretty fun. I think it's more the type of person is it attracts is the main issue

[Videri]

If you think huge zerg guilds are a problem on PVE servers, wait til you see PVP servers. There will be one huge guild and a few small squads that scurry like rodents and get routinely stomped in PVP.

[Tunabros]

seems kinda dumb to remove legacy items on a time lock custom server lol

[Tenderizer]

This is big dream stuff. I can't wait to get ganked over a cracked staff skele fte

id rather have this than making another server for a red progression only to split the community on p99 even more. remember when blue had over 1k regularly and now with 3 servers it barely happens now. could you imagine splitting p99 into 4 servers. id rather have populated serve,r even if it means fighting over cracked staffs in a legendary battle in gfay.

plus splitting staff among another server? no, once green pve is over pvp should have its time to shine like pve did. might even see higher population numbers than red ever did.

[Tunabros]

It's too hard to get back into EQ once you've taken a break

also elden ring just dropped

fuck everquest

[Convict]

take 2 months off work (or quit job) if you have one
roll necro
get to lvl 40 before most of the server
camp manastone as much as you can before groups catch up
??
profit
roll the class you actually wanna play with potentially millions of plat worth of manastones to supply you for gearing up your real char for the rest of the timeline

[Gustoo]

Green 2 isn't going to come for years, regardless of whether or not staff makes the right decision and makes red 2.0

This project seems to like to allow people to flourish at the top of the heap and enjoy their ill or hard gotten gains or whatever.

To roll out a new PVE server right away would be to pull the carpet out from those dudes.

Red server has a chance of coming relatively soon.

Green server? 2 years or more is my guess.

There is no way staff is dumb enough to repeat green 1.0 legacy item implementation. It's going to be substantially different. Green 1.0 was the worst EQ experience you could have if you wanted to be like a top player, or even an average guy enjoying questing because of the log jams at all decent value item locations.

So ya don't worry this guide will be obsolete because staff doesn't hate the players enough to do green 1.0 a second time.

[cd288]

take 2 months off work (or quit job) if you have one
roll necro
get to lvl 40 before most of the server
camp manastone as much as you can before groups catch up
??
profit
roll the class you actually wanna play with potentially millions of plat worth of manastones to supply you for gearing up your real char for the rest of the timeline

Nice theory, but as we saw with Green 1.0 even if you're level 40 before most of the server there will still be like 20 other people right there with you camping the manastone

[cd288]

Green 2 isn't going to come for years, regardless of whether or not staff makes the right decision and makes red 2.0

This project seems to like to allow people to flourish at the top of the heap and enjoy their ill or hard gotten gains or whatever.

To roll out a new PVE server right away would be to pull the carpet out from those dudes.

Red server has a chance of coming relatively soon.

Green server? 2 years or more is my guess.

There is no way staff is dumb enough to repeat green 1.0 legacy item implementation. It's going to be substantially different. Green 1.0 was the worst EQ experience you could have if you wanted to be like a top player, or even an average guy enjoying questing because of the log jams at all decent value item locations.

So ya don't worry this guide will be obsolete because staff doesn't hate the players enough to do green 1.0 a second time.

I think it will be several months to a year between Green 1.0 and 2.0. I think there are various classic changes that will be implemented this time around and will likely need some time to get in place.

[Goldknyght]

Let's just hope Green 2.0 comes with /list 2.0 (ie. random lists instead of "staying awake or trading accounts for days" lists).

The goal of this place (and Green in particular) is to be classic right? There's nothing classic about the above, but it's completely classic to have a random chance at a popular item.

TLDR: Random named or mobs drop legacy items in said zone. Making /list pointless as it is in its current state unless ur a no lifer.

Problem also with classic items is during the timeline people didnt know manastone etc. were gonna get nerfed and or removed all together. so people didnt need a /list to begin with.
So, my 2cents is. WE AINT GETTING CLASSIC BACK. PERIOD (WHY TRY). so with that said. jus have legacy items drop off random named mobs in those same zones. That way no one guild could take over, outside of taking over the ENTIRE zone. which is possible but least its more classic than a /list that u need 20people to help u camp said camp. like seriously, /list was a good idea, but in practice is only helped the no lifers.

[PatChapp]

id rather have this than making another server for a red progression only to split the community on p99 even more. remember when blue had over 1k regularly and now with 3 servers it barely happens now. could you imagine splitting p99 into 4 servers. id rather have populated serve,r even if it means fighting over cracked staffs in a legendary battle in gfay.

plus splitting staff among another server? no, once green pve is over pvp should have its time to shine like pve did. might even see higher population numbers than red ever did.

The battles for blackburrow will be legendary. Hope I don't miss red 2.0 launch

[Nomadic Plainswalker]

Great write up. Look forward to your Kunark thoughts.

[tadkins]

I would honestly love to see a more "user friendly" experience with the next Green.

-Handle the legacy /list items in a better way that doesn't involve having to run accounts in shifts, or having to be so alert and awake at hours that would be genuinely health damaging.
-Open up the raids to everyone in some fashion, let the big places of lore and the epic figures be something everyone can experience. The big cutthroat guilds of P99 have had enough time in the spotlight, can't we say enough is enough already?

While I would love to see something like this, I know it likely won't happen.

[sajbert]

take 2 months off work (or quit job) if you have one
roll necro
get to lvl 40 before most of the server
camp manastone as much as you can before groups catch up
??
profit
roll the class you actually wanna play with potentially millions of plat worth of manastones to supply you for gearing up your real char for the rest of the timeline
Real reason to roll necro is so that you can be FD the entire camp and just click a box whilst other kill the PHs for you.

[Fawqueue]

That's a bit of an overdramatic representation of legacy items on Green. I did them all, multiple times, and never ran into an 80+ hour camp. And I didn't share my account with anyone else - I legit stayed awake through the entire thing. Jboots were typically 13-24 hours, my rubi BP was the worst (at about 65 hours). My first Manastone was worse than my second (at about 47 hours) but that's only because I was #1 on the list on Teal when the merge was suddenly thrust upon us, and when the post-merge Green came back online I was bumped back to #4. The second Manastone was closer to 30 hours.

Don't get me wrong - legacy camps are in no way enjoyable. But you can definitely do them if you carve out the time, or as the OP said you can share the burden and get them quite easily.

[Videri]

Thanks, guys. I'll adjust it in a later draft. I never camped the JBoots, so I didn't know it was that short. But my experience was pretty standard at Manastone, at least during part of that era; and I did some time on a friend's character for the Guise and there were 20 people in that little room. Every time the Assassin spawned holding a dagger, they would writhe and moan and self-flagellate. I had this funny convo, though.
https://i.imgur.com/umBEqvH.png

[sajbert]

Jboots camp for me was 27hrs and failed attempt, then 22 hours. Some people had been going at it for 40+ hours and some I know got it after 12, someone probably sooner than that.

AC camp or farming plat is a way better option for any class that doesn’t need jboots right away.

[Krone90]

Ima do enchanter on 2.0, never tried it =D

[Jhadree J'Hadaan]

id rather have this than making another server for a red progression only to split the community on p99 even more. remember when blue had over 1k regularly and now with 3 servers it barely happens now. could you imagine splitting p99 into 4 servers. id rather have populated serve,r even if it means fighting over cracked staffs in a legendary battle in gfay.

plus splitting staff among another server? no, once green pve is over pvp should have its time to shine like pve did. might even see higher population numbers than red ever did.

It never ceases to amaze me how people continuously beat on the dead horse, which is pvp. It has been tried and has failed time after time, in game after game. The demographic of people who prefer pvp is so small, why would any developer want to cut their own throats by making a pvp-exclusive server? Just log in on a Saturday night and compare server populations. Take a look at Green and Blue, then take a look at Red. Uh huh. Pvp is dead dead dead. Get over it. Nobody wants a bunch of pvp jackasses causing grief on a decent server. :cool:

[JDAm0nk]

That's a bit of an overdramatic representation of legacy items on Green... And I didn't share my account with anyone else - I legit stayed awake through the entire thing... my rubi BP was the worst (at about 65 hours). My first Manastone was worse than my second (at about 47 hours)

How did you stay awake for 65 hours straight?

"Not that bad"??? :confused:

[Tunabros]

How did you stay awake for 65 hours straight?

"Not that bad"??? :confused:

you can share accounts and have people swap

[btravis1990]

TLDR: Random named or mobs drop legacy items in said zone. Making /list pointless as it is in its current state unless ur a no lifer.

Problem also with classic items is during the timeline people didnt know manastone etc. were gonna get nerfed and or removed all together. so people didnt need a /list to begin with.
So, my 2cents is. WE AINT GETTING CLASSIC BACK. PERIOD (WHY TRY). so with that said. jus have legacy items drop off random named mobs in those same zones. That way no one guild could take over, outside of taking over the ENTIRE zone. which is possible but least its more classic than a /list that u need 20people to help u camp said camp. like seriously, /list was a good idea, but in practice is only helped the no lifers.


Just make all bosses that drop Epic items have /lists too? Why is it that the "top tier" raiding guilds block some of these items? Have rotations on mini's.

[Toxigen]

That's a bit of an overdramatic representation of legacy items on Green. I did them all, multiple times, and never ran into an 80+ hour camp. And I didn't share my account with anyone else - I legit stayed awake through the entire thing. Jboots were typically 13-24 hours, my rubi BP was the worst (at about 65 hours). My first Manastone was worse than my second (at about 47 hours) but that's only because I was #1 on the list on Teal when the merge was suddenly thrust upon us, and when the post-merge Green came back online I was bumped back to #4. The second Manastone was closer to 30 hours.

Don't get me wrong - legacy camps are in no way enjoyable. But you can definitely do them if you carve out the time, or as the OP said you can share the burden and get them quite easily.

hope it was worth it for you

[Tunabros]

Im sure Rogean and Nilbog are taking notes reading this thread

kek

[JDAm0nk]

you can share accounts and have people swap

Right - but in the post they mention that they didn't swap accounts & instead stayed awake throughout these camps.

So it seems like either:

a) munching on a steady diet of 'phetamines, staying up for days and plainly ignoring/damaging your health

or

b) sharing accounts and swapping, which also makes it so that small circles of friends/guilds monopolize all the camps + content... and is anyone really itching to redo that all over again?

[Goldknyght]

Just make all bosses that drop Epic items have /lists too? Why is it that the "top tier" raiding guilds block some of these items? Have rotations on mini's.

ur ignorant with this statement, and its sad. Epic items are in game for life. legacy items arnt. people like u have no argument so you try to poke holes at a legit way to curb legacy BS /list nonsense. its like talkin to a tree sometimes with responses from people like urself good sir/maam.

[Goldknyght]

Im sure Rogean and Nilbog are taking notes reading this thread

kek

lol

[Goldknyght]

Right - but in the post they mention that they didn't swap accounts & instead stayed awake throughout these camps.

So it seems like either:

a) munching on a steady diet of 'phetamines, staying up for days and plainly ignoring/damaging your health

or

b) sharing accounts and swapping, which also makes it so that small circles of friends/guilds monopolize all the camps + content... and is anyone really itching to redo that all over again?

ikr i saw 65hours and was like yeah ok u stayed up vs sharing account. (prolly thinks someone at his/her house using his/her account isnt considered sharing i guess)

[Fawqueue]

How did you stay awake for 65 hours straight?

"Not that bad"??? :confused:

On the laptop all day while I worked, through dinner and time with the fiancee, then when she'd got to bed I'd move back to the office and watch Netflix all night. I did 72 hours at Hadden way back on Blue and passed out before getting booted. Didn't even get an earring to show for it. So if I can survive that, I can survive any legacy camp on Green.

[Fawqueue]

ikr i saw 65hours and was like yeah ok u stayed up vs sharing account. (prolly thinks someone at his/her house using his/her account isnt considered sharing i guess)

At 65 hours that's not even the longest camp I've done, but it's not easy. I work from home, and you can do about three days (the first two are fine, but the third is torture) without sleep provided you don't have too many demands on your energy and attention.

What my post does not mention was the failed Rubi BP and Manastone attempt where I didn't manage to make it. One attempt at each camp (for my second BP and third MS) I eventually passed out and missed the alert, the way the p99 staff intended.

[Videri]

At 65 hours that's not even the longest camp I've done, but it's not easy. I work from home, and you can do about three days (the first two are fine, but the third is torture) without sleep provided you don't have too many demands on your energy and attention.

What my post does not mention was the failed Rubi BP and Manastone attempt where I didn't manage to make it. One attempt at each camp (for my second BP and third MS) I eventually passed out and missed the alert, the way the p99 staff intended.

May I recommend account sharing? :) And sleep? :p

[Tunabros]

Right - but in the post they mention that they didn't swap accounts & instead stayed awake throughout these camps.

So it seems like either:

a) munching on a steady diet of 'phetamines, staying up for days and plainly ignoring/damaging your health

or

b) sharing accounts and swapping, which also makes it so that small circles of friends/guilds monopolize all the camps + content... and is anyone really itching to redo that all over again?

no one did option A lol

even neckbeards value their own health to some extent

[cd288]

At 65 hours that's not even the longest camp I've done, but it's not easy. I work from home, and you can do about three days (the first two are fine, but the third is torture) without sleep provided you don't have too many demands on your energy and attention.

What my post does not mention was the failed Rubi BP and Manastone attempt where I didn't manage to make it. One attempt at each camp (for my second BP and third MS) I eventually passed out and missed the alert, the way the p99 staff intended.

Why would you do this though? Especially multiple times

[sajbert]

Why would you do this though? Especially multiple times

pretty likely at least someone had a bot going.

[OuterChimp]

Poh Tay Toe!

[Fawqueue]

Why would you do this though? Especially multiple times

For Jboots it was just different characters.

For everything else it was value. I just came back to the project like a month and a half ago, and selling a single manastone got me caught right back up. A few late nights where I click a button a few times an hour while watching shows was an easy way to set myself up for the rest of this Green. I'll do it again on Green 2.0.

[cd288]

But like why? What’s the point of damaging your health like that for an emulated server of a 23 year old game?

[Ooloo]

Reminder that camping a manastone for three days would be no less sad or unhealthy if everquest just came out yesterday and this wasn't an emu.

And I'd still probably consider doing it, but then say nope fuck that cause I only have ankle length socks.

[Ransurian]

Let's just hope Green 2.0 comes with /list 2.0 (ie. random lists instead of "staying awake or trading accounts for days" lists).

The goal of this place (and Green in particular) is to be classic right? There's nothing classic about the above, but it's completely classic to have a random chance at a popular item.

And here we go with a debate that's been raging for literally over a decade. Sigh.

"Do we keep things strictly as they were in terms of game mechanics or tweak the game to alter player behavior so that it emulates how the game actually was in 1999?"

For whatever it's worth, I'm 100% on board with changes to make the game less toxic and more accessible. At this point, classic EQ is a solved game. It's grown stale. But you have a lot of imbeciles who are literally willing to defend camping stuff like manastones for dozens of hours, even though many of them share account info.

[Ooloo]

I'm 100% on board with changes to make the game less toxic and more accessible.

And this is also an age old argument and it basically created the modern class of mmo's that most of us play here to avoid.

I mean "toxicity" (annoyingly vague term btw) wouldn't just go away because there are instances, it would just take some other form. Fact is if the game has any competitive content at all, somebody is going to dominate it, and if the game has no competitive content it's extremely boring and generic.

Although I agree with you about the account sharing it does seem like that would undercut a lot of the satisfaction that you get by getting an item. I think the /list system for green actually worked pretty damn well, other than account sharing. Account sharing is a huge part of the reason any of those camps ever become multi-day, because most sane people are just not willing to do that or would naturally slip up by missing an afk check and be booted. That happened naturally all the time with the current system. If you got to the guise camp and you were #12 on the list, you almost certainly didn't have to actually wait for 11 other people to get it before you.

[CrazyPro]

Thank you my potato friend.

[Fawqueue]

But like why? What’s the point of damaging your health like that for an emulated server of a 23 year old game?

Honestly, that's a hard question to answer that a lot of people playing here have to face. I mean, what's the point of playing this emulated project at all when it's just recreating an experience we've already done? Not really sure. But what I do know is that it's satisfying regardless if not ridiculous, and if you're already going to do something ridiculous you might as well go all-in and get the cool legacy shit.

[cd288]

Allowing account sharing while on a list defeats the point of the list system that was implemented

[Ooloo]

Allowing account sharing while on a list defeats the point of the list system that was implemented

Of course it does but there's really no good solution to it I can think of. Even if somebody is just taking turns irl with a different person playing their computer.

The list camps were definitely grueling but without them those items would just be even more unattainable for most people because ST or whoever would just completely monopolize the camps. For better or worse, the system did at least work to prevent that.

[tadkins]

I mean "toxicity" (annoyingly vague term btw) wouldn't just go away because there are instances, it would just take some other form. Fact is if the game has any competitive content at all, somebody is going to dominate it, and if the game has no competitive content it's extremely boring and generic.



I just wish there was a place for those who aren't super cutthroat and competitive.

[PatChapp]

I just wish there was a place for those who aren't super cutthroat and competitive.

There is, just avoid end game raiding. If you avoid it, you don't need the gear it provides anyway.

[Ooloo]

I just wish there was a place for those who aren't super cutthroat and competitive.

I still play eq all the time and I've never really been a huge raider. I usually join one of the lower tier guilds and maybe raid when I can, but I'm not even in a guild currently. There are lots of ways to enjoy the game.

You do raise an interesting point though which is that the /list camps were kind of a taste of end game cutthroat nerd dedication that anyone lvl 35+ could partake in, and I can definitely see why that turns people off. There was also kind of a brief culture of comraderie around them too, which is kind of a neat genuinely new emergent thing that wouldn't exist without the list system. I remember specific people from the list camps cause you're all sort of slogging through them together, I chatted with tons of cool people. And we also all hated the jerks who wouldn't help clear the camps. Socially it very much felt classic.

Still it's hard for me to imagine a vanilla-velious eq server that was friendly and casual across the board. What would that look like? If you want a camp that's taken, you just go up and politely ask the person if you can have it? Cause they'll probably say "well uh, no I was here first", even if in a polite way.

It kind of comes down to personality type too. If you're just cool and friendly and patient, most other people on green I've found will be too. Even most people in seal team. If I want to camp something and it's taken, I just send that person a tell and ask if they can let me know when they're leaving, and like 95% of the time they say sure, and they do.

[loramin]

Still it's hard for me to imagine a vanilla-velious eq server that was friendly and casual across the board. What would that look like?

It would look like the vanilla-velious live eq servers that had rotations, for the raid scene, and it would resolve camp disputes using random resolution (just like the GM Guidebook from the live servers (https://wiki.project1999.com/Kunark_Era_Customer_Service_Guidelines#8.2.2_Disru ption_Procedures) said live GMs did).

In other words, it'd be 100% classic ... just not R&N's (hyper-competition-focused) version.

[Scalem]

I just wish there was a place for those who aren't super cutthroat and competitive.

If you want to raid on p99 you are out of luck. If you want to actually experience classic EQ that isn’t super neckbeardy and cringe you will have to go to different server like takp.

[Toxigen]

There is, just avoid end game raiding. If you avoid it, you don't need the gear it provides anyway.

10/10

[cd288]

It would look like the vanilla-velious live eq servers that had rotations, for the raid scene, and it would resolve camp disputes using random resolution (just like the GM Guidebook from the live servers (https://wiki.project1999.com/Kunark_Era_Customer_Service_Guidelines#8.2.2_Disru ption_Procedures) said live GMs did).

In other words, it'd be 100% classic ... just not R&N's (hyper-competition-focused) version.

You missed the part about requiring the parties to work out a compromise themselves first.

[loramin]

You missed the part about requiring the parties to work out a compromise themselves first.

Much as I'd like to see that, as it'd be classic ... there are not enough volunteer GMs in the world to enforce it with our population ;)

[OuterChimp]

Couldn't you use multiple computers with different IPs, all up on a different character to hold multiple spots on the /list?

[Ooloo]

Couldn't you use multiple computers with different IPs, all up on a different character to hold multiple spots on the /list?

Yes there are many ways to abuse the /lists. But their presence is still better than their absence on balance, unless:

-You don't think legacy items should exist at all (which would be lame)
or
-You think legacy items should exist forever and never be taken out, which would remove a huge amount of the appeal of them, and also be lame.

[zaneosak]

How do we get every player only gets 1 account and no accounts can be shared or logged in by another user other than the owner? When's that server exist? Only in my dreams?

[JDAm0nk]

-You think legacy items should exist forever and never be taken out, which would remove a huge amount of the appeal of them, and also be lame.

The only way I can really interpret this is similar to if someone was arguing for the need to keep Kronos on TLP servers. Yeah, they bring in a good number of players and help to make the environment more "competitive" - but it also becomes the foundation for the server's economy and community. Not always in a good way.

Why would a server be "more broken" or "less competitive" if some legacy items continued to drop? Does anyone give a @%8@ if more Guises were running around or if Rubicite Armor continued to drop? What about Beads, OVP, CoS? The majority of players on Green who participate in "end-game" EQ likely have those items or the plat for 'em anyways. And my perception is that the majority of the people who are sitting through these legacy camps are hardcore players (like Fawqueue) who have been playing P99 for a decade plus...

There are also plenty of in-demand items and spells that continually drop on these servers yet still fetch lots of plat, so it's not like "no legacy items = welfare pixels for all."

[Kirdan]

How do we get every player only gets 1 account and no accounts can be shared or logged in by another user other than the owner? When's that server exist? Only in my dreams?

my dreams too

[tadkins]

There is, just avoid end game raiding. If you avoid it, you don't need the gear it provides anyway.

Honest questions though, what is there to do if you get to 60 but aren't doing endgame raiding? What sort of progression is there? What value does such a person have in this community?

[PatChapp]

Honest questions though, what is there to do if you get to 60 but aren't doing endgame raiding? What sort of progression is there? What value does such a person have in this community?

Lots of stuff to do at 60, you can join a smaller raid guild and so it casually If you want. There is a happy middle out there.
That said I largely abandoned by first lvl 60 toon and level alts.

[Ooloo]

The only way I can really interpret this is similar to if someone was arguing for the need to keep Kronos on TLP servers. Yeah, they bring in a good number of players and help to make the environment more "competitive" - but it also becomes the foundation for the server's economy and community. Not always in a good way.

Why would a server be "more broken" or "less competitive" if some legacy items continued to drop? Does anyone give a @%8@ if more Guises were running around or if Rubicite Armor continued to drop? What about Beads, OVP, CoS? The majority of players on Green who participate in "end-game" EQ likely have those items or the plat for 'em anyways. And my perception is that the majority of the people who are sitting through these legacy camps are hardcore players (like Fawqueue) who have been playing P99 for a decade plus...

There are also plenty of in-demand items and spells that continually drop on these servers yet still fetch lots of plat, so it's not like "no legacy items = welfare pixels for all."

I get what you're saying, but those items are so fundamental to early EQ, and the reason they were taken out back in 1999 is because they were considered game breaking, not just sought-after. The appeal of them *is* that they are finite, and limited, unlike many other aspects of the game which naturally just continue forever.

I have been playing p99 for a decade, but I'm really not a hardcore raider or anything. I just really enjoy classic EQ, and a fundamental part of it is high highs and low lows. It's a much higher high to loot a legacy item because you know they're limited, and it's also a much lower low to not get one because you know they're limited. It's a big part of the appeal of the game for me, having played many later mmo's like EQ2 and WoW and Lotro, specifically.

Guises, specifically, are just really cool to have. They don't screw with the economy at all because they're nodrop, and it's kind of a status symbol that you've both been around since the early server and also sat through that damn camp. I honestly enjoyed that camp, felt like an old grindy classic group where people were pretty chatty because you're all just stuck in this room together. Sounds weird on paper but I really liked it.

[Kirdan]

Honest questions though, what is there to do if you get to 60 but aren't doing endgame raiding? What sort of progression is there? What value does such a person have in this community?

EQ isn't a linear game. Nobody has to raid. Nobody has to level to the cap. Go explore random things, meet new people, stop using the wiki, have fun however you have fun.

[Ooloo]

^^^ Exactly. And even if you are 60 and not raiding, make an alt of a class you've never played. I mean if you get to 60 and think "well now I have to raid 24\7 or quit" you're EQing all wrong imo.

There are still zones and encounters in vanilla-velious I've never even seen or been to, and I've been playing the game in some form since 1999.

[PatChapp]

^^^ Exactly. And even if you are 60 and not raiding, make an alt of a class you've never played. I mean if you get to 60 and think "well now I have to raid 24\7 or quit" you're EQing all wrong imo.

There are still zones and encounters in vanilla-velious I've never even seen or been to, and I've been playing the game in some form since 1999.
I was farting around in dalnir recently. What a crazy place, and mistmoore? Almost died on my lvl 60. Tons of stuff I haven't seen

[btravis1990]

ur ignorant with this statement, and its sad. Epic items are in game for life. legacy items arnt. people like u have no argument so you try to poke holes at a legit way to curb legacy BS /list nonsense. its like talkin to a tree sometimes with responses from people like urself good sir/maam.

who hurt you?

[OuterChimp]

What is a kronos? I don't remember them from live.

[Goldknyght]

who hurt you?

who hurt you?

[Goldknyght]

At 65 hours that's not even the longest camp I've done, but it's not easy. I work from home, and you can do about three days (the first two are fine, but the third is torture) without sleep provided you don't have too many demands on your energy and attention.

What my post does not mention was the failed Rubi BP and Manastone attempt where I didn't manage to make it. One attempt at each camp (for my second BP and third MS) I eventually passed out and missed the alert, the way the p99 staff intended.

well most people dont work from and and can do this. Why I feel my suggestion is a good solution.

[Insaiyan]

green 2.0 will actually be red 2.0

[Tunabros]

green 2.0 will actually be red 2.0

just cringed so hard

[eqravenprince]

green 2.0 will actually be red 2.0

I don't care if they call it red 2.0 as long as it's not pvp.

[PatChapp]

I don't care if they call it red 2.0 as long as it's not pvp.

Eq PvP is amazing, for a while
It gets super one sided and griefy after a while.
But before that point it's amazing.

[Goldknyght]

Eq PvP is amazing, for a while
It gets super one sided and griefy after a while.
But before that point it's amazing.

only pvp i had fun on playing eq, was the faction. good vs newt vs evil. sullon zek. was fun times.

[Coridan]

I'd rather they reitemize it than list stuff to be honest. Classic EQ could do with a little shakeup on where all the cool gear is at. Send groups into Runnyeye, Mistmoore, Kerra Isle and Najena this cycle.

[Goldknyght]

I'd rather they reitemize it than list stuff to be honest. Classic EQ could do with a little shakeup on where all the cool gear is at. Send groups into Runnyeye, Mistmoore, Kerra Isle and Najena this cycle.

Hmm I like this idea too, its similar to what I proposed. I just proposed items dropped same zones just differ mobs at random, so no one camp can be locked down.

[Dollar]

I think once you loot a legacy item, loot being the keyword, you can no longer loot that specific legacy item again on the same character. BAM that would solve a shit ton of problems.

[PatChapp]

I think once you loot a legacy item, loot being the keyword, you can no longer loot that specific legacy item again on the same character. BAM that would solve a shit ton of problems.

That's how it was, but the lists were reset once maybe twice during the time beads dropped.
It was actually per account, but people with multiple accounts could avoid it pretty easily

[Toxigen]

That's how it was, but the lists were reset once maybe twice during the time beads dropped.
It was actually per account, but people with multiple accounts could avoid it pretty easily

There is no reason to ever have more than 1 character on an account.

[BlackBellamy]

I camped a Guise solo in 8 hours, 14 and 16 hours on three chars. I got the Najena J-boots on two chars in 8 and 12 hours. Rubi BP camp sometimes had like 2 people on list.

The manastone I bought. The wait times around that time were 20-24 hours and I found it easier to just trade 40 pieces of rubicite for it. Which took longer than 24 hours to acquire, but that was a chill afk camp with no timer.

[Tunabros]

still think its dumb as hell to nerf legacy items on a time lock custom server

[Twochain]

Make LGUK a no CSR zone.

/List is fucking crazy.

The average person needed to be online for 3 days to get #1 on a list. If they weren't using a program to automatically solve the /list afk check, they were having friends watching the camp, probably with team viewer, so that they could sleep for 4 hours and hop back on. That's insanity.

Make LGUK no csr. People will work it out themselves one way or the other.

[Videri]

One of my top pieces of advice for next server, and any other servers, is each guild should either be a raiding guild or a leveling guild - no in-between.

In <Castle> on Green, we've been straddling the line between the two, and it's awesome and I love it, but it's a lot of work to balance casualness and hardcoreness and keep our diverse range of players happy. Next server, I'm gonna do something easier.

It would be more straightforward to only be a family guild, with zero raids, maybe just some Seb keying and going for Verina Tomb and triggered fights like Ixiblat; OR to be a raiding guild and just tell people "be level 60 with 100 MR or you don't get any loot" and just ride hard.

[Coridan]

Not classic but fuck it, make some new raid targets with legacy gear. Stick Manastone on Mayong Mistmoore, make everyone race. Throw Guise onhom too. Throw Megalodon back in Rathetear and give him some of it too.

[starkind]

Best advice is do red 2.0 instead actually.

[Fawqueue]

Best advice is do red 2.0 instead actually.

Red 2.0, no - that'd be just as empty as Red 1.0 after a month. Do Teams PvP if anything.

[eqravenprince]

One of my top pieces of advice for next server, and any other servers, is each guild should either be a raiding guild or a leveling guild - no in-between.

In <Castle> on Green, we've been straddling the line between the two, and it's awesome and I love it, but it's a lot of work to balance casualness and hardcoreness and keep our diverse range of players happy. Next server, I'm gonna do something easier.

It would be more straightforward to only be a family guild, with zero raids, maybe just some Seb keying and going for Verina Tomb and triggered fights like Ixiblat; OR to be a raiding guild and just tell people "be level 60 with 100 MR or you don't get any loot" and just ride hard.

Casual guild +1 for me. Screw the existing raid scene. I have no desire to race to targets. I want to take my time, enjoy the moment of raiding rather than rushing. If it were instancing, where I could plan a raid at a specific time with my friends, then awesome. I've given up most all hope of experiencing most raid content.

[Gustoo]

Casual guild +1 for me. Screw the existing raid scene. I have no desire to race to targets. I want to take my time, enjoy the moment of raiding rather than rushing. If it were instancing, where I could plan a raid at a specific time with my friends, then awesome. I've given up most all hope of experiencing most raid content.

This isn't a pro PVP post, but consider playing red and enjoying some of those encounters.

[Fammaden]

Yeah, you won't have any problems with other players trying to raid the same content on red for sure.

[Graahle]

Best advice is for you all to finally move on from this project.

[Fawqueue]

Best advice is for you all to finally move on from this project.

The industry needs another comparable MMO first. No matter what you try to leave for, you'll come back because everything, including live EQ, pales in comparison.

[Graahle]

TLP>

[eqravenprince]

Best advice is for you all to finally move on from this project.

It'd probably be better for my health, but like any good drug, I'm addicted.

[cd288]

TLP>

Meh no thanks

Also, the problem with TLPs is that eventually each server dies and no one plays there anymore so it’s even more pointless than playing on P99. At least on P99 there will always just be two PVE servers and my old characters will always still be on a server with some level of decent population

[Rick Sanchez]

how about shut down red and have two dedicated green servers, so people can enjoy the game at a reasonable level ?

RIP - Teal.

[Fammaden]

how about shut down red

Didn't read any further, but this dude seems to be on the right track.

[w1zard]

The /list bullshit can easily be solved by not removing items like manastone or make them rare drops after the timeline. I think any item that wasn't retroactively removed or changed should remain droppable somehow. They'll never do this though because reasons reasons reasons #nochanges. And the elite players will be happy because their main objective is making sure everybody else has less fun and somebody buys their manastone for 800k someday so they can twink out a dozen melee alts to solo blackburrow with.

But let's be real, most of us are here to have the experiences we missed out on when we were young and didn't know anything about the game. Cucking people out of that experience isn't part of Classic - people were actually friendly and nice in 1999. Shit, most servers only had 1 raid guild. People were happy sitting around chatting while killing a few mobs every 18 minutes. They even grouped with wizards and hybrids and didn't complain about "mah xp/hour".

The argument that most players had crappy dial-up internet to stop mass AoE also applies to camping an item for days at a time. Few people shared accounts in 1999 and even fewer could tie up their phone line for days at a time. The /list feature doesn't resemble the Classic experience whatsoever and was only implemented so GMs didn't have to babysit these camps.

tl;dr Green 2.0 = don't remove items like Manastone, CoS, etc in timeline.

[cd288]

The /list bullshit can easily be solved by not removing items like manastone or make them rare drops after the timeline. I think any item that wasn't retroactively removed or changed should remain droppable somehow. They'll never do this though because reasons reasons reasons #nochanges. And the elite players will be happy because their main objective is making sure everybody else has less fun and somebody buys their manastone for 800k someday so they can twink out a dozen melee alts to solo blackburrow with.

But let's be real, most of us are here to have the experiences we missed out on when we were young and didn't know anything about the game. Cucking people out of that experience isn't part of Classic - people were actually friendly and nice in 1999. Shit, most servers only had 1 raid guild. People were happy sitting around chatting while killing a few mobs every 18 minutes. They even grouped with wizards and hybrids and didn't complain about "mah xp/hour".

The argument that most players had crappy dial-up internet to stop mass AoE also applies to camping an item for days at a time. Few people shared accounts in 1999 and even fewer could tie up their phone line for days at a time. The /list feature doesn't resemble the Classic experience whatsoever and was only implemented so GMs didn't have to babysit these camps.

tl;dr Green 2.0 = don't remove items like Manastone, CoS, etc in timeline.

You really think that keeping things like manastones rate drops won’t result in people no lifing in line for the duration of the server? Have you played P99 recently?

And that’s if there even is a line and not just a couple people from the top guild monopolizing it forever. Honestly your average player probably gets a better overall shot at getting a manastone with the list system than they would if you kept it dropping forever; at least one guild can’t monopolize the camp.

[w1zard]

You really think that keeping things like manastones rate drops won’t result in people no lifing in line for the duration of the server? Have you played P99 recently?

And that’s if there even is a line and not just a couple people from the top guild monopolizing it forever. Honestly your average player probably gets a better overall shot at getting a manastone with the list system than they would if you kept it dropping forever; at least one guild can’t monopolize the camp.

It may not stop people from no lifing the camp years into Velious, but the constant influx of supply will decrease the value of the item over time. Assuming constant demand, the item should become more accessible to more players over life of server.

We can also further make items like manastone no-drop to further discourage camping for cash. Think the camp would eventually become like AC in OOT where it's often camped but not really impossible to obtain. Think that's the ideal scenario for most of these removed items.

[Gustoo]

CD288 manastone should be in game forever but not dropped by evil eye in lguk. On a non pvp server it should probably be super rare random drop from level 40 plus "named" monsters in old world, forever. Like the bracer of hidden but harder.

No legacy items with pre determined camp sites and timelines should exist in the next P99 server launch. It isn't classic to have a guide book to riches due to "scarcity" in this fashion. EQ servers launched after nerfs had the nerfs in place. Manastones didn't exist in sullon zek, etc.

The implementation of these items on p99 is ALREADY custom in this sense, so it should be customized further to not make the game insanely toxically about hoarding items waiting for them to become valuable "legacy" items.

We have 3 servers that played that way. Mainly 2 servers because during Blue time nothing was really determined. Red was OK because of PVP but green was horrible.

So next Red and next Green should be more thoughtful for the sake of classic.

[cd288]

It may not stop people from no lifing the camp years into Velious, but the constant influx of supply will decrease the value of the item over time. Assuming constant demand, the item should become more accessible to more players over life of server.

We can also further make items like manastone no-drop to further discourage camping for cash. Think the camp would eventually become like AC in OOT where it's often camped but not really impossible to obtain. Think that's the ideal scenario for most of these removed items.

I mean you need only look at fungi tunic to see that your expectation about value is incorrect. Values on blue have stayed stable and even sometimes increased despite the fact that the item has been dropping/people have been perma camping for 10 years. Valuable items will still be very valuable and require tons of plat farming to acquire if you’re not doing the camp. Manastone would be no different

[cd288]

CD288 manastone should be in game forever but not dropped by evil eye in lguk. On a non pvp server it should probably be super rare random drop from level 40 plus "named" monsters in old world, forever. Like the bracer of hidden but harder.

No legacy items with pre determined camp sites and timelines should exist in the next P99 server launch. It isn't classic to have a guide book to riches due to "scarcity" in this fashion. EQ servers launched after nerfs had the nerfs in place. Manastones didn't exist in sullon zek, etc.

The implementation of these items on p99 is ALREADY custom in this sense, so it should be customized further to not make the game insanely toxically about hoarding items waiting for them to become valuable "legacy" items.

We have 3 servers that played that way. Mainly 2 servers because during Blue time nothing was really determined. Red was OK because of PVP but green was horrible.

So next Red and next Green should be more thoughtful for the sake of classic.

I wouldn’t mind that type of system with manastone. Or honestly make it certain types of 40+ mobs and rotate it to different ones every like 6 months without telling anyone.

[adruidarkly]

imo /list is fine, but it shouldn't be a flat interval for all camps, should adapt to the respawn interval. would make sense to let it be paused and resumed where time on /list ranks you into the current list.

also should require active participation in killing the ph at spot <4 or something

[Razdeline]

When did the great elf sim become an equity sim? All these rules and regulations make things not fun. Just like RL.

[w1zard]

CD288 manastone should be in game forever but not dropped by evil eye in lguk. On a non pvp server it should probably be super rare random drop from level 40 plus "named" monsters in old world, forever. Like the bracer of hidden but harder.

No legacy items with pre determined camp sites and timelines should exist in the next P99 server launch. It isn't classic to have a guide book to riches due to "scarcity" in this fashion. EQ servers launched after nerfs had the nerfs in place. Manastones didn't exist in sullon zek, etc.

The implementation of these items on p99 is ALREADY custom in this sense, so it should be customized further to not make the game insanely toxically about hoarding items waiting for them to become valuable "legacy" items.

We have 3 servers that played that way. Mainly 2 servers because during Blue time nothing was really determined. Red was OK because of PVP but green was horrible.

So next Red and next Green should be more thoughtful for the sake of classic.

This makes a lot of sense. Seems more "classic" to launch new servers without these removed items if that was the case.

Can also make removed items a very rare random global drop off any mob over a certain level. This may encourage people to actually play the game?

[eqravenprince]

When did the great elf sim become an equity sim? All these rules and regulations make things not fun. Just like RL.

Rules and regulations are usually a direct result of people doing bad things.

[tadkins]

TLP>

I'm eagerly waiting for the announcement for the next TLP. I tried Mischief for a month recently but joined pretty late, so I think it'll be more fun getting in on one at the very beginning.

For whatever flaws a TLP server might have, at least I can count on playing the class I want (wizard) without being ostracized. I can deal with the existence of krono and a messed up Freeport if it means being able to finally see raid content without a guild like FoW or Seal Team coming in to curbstomp a smaller guild.

[w1zard]

When did the great elf sim become an equity sim? All these rules and regulations make things not fun. Just like RL.

If you don't like rules and regulations then go to Red. Few people play there for a reason. Some rules and regulations can make the game more fun for more people.

[Gustoo]

w1zard no one left red because it didn't have enough rules and regulations. It has tons of rules and regulations. But you're right that it is a better place to play the game than blue or green these days. Even low pop.

[Castle2.0]

Just gonna use my bag full of manastones to wipe each individual tear off the eye of each elf complaining 'list isn't fair.'

[w1zard]

Just gonna use my bag full of manastones to wipe each individual tear off the eye of each elf complaining 'list isn't fair.'

This is why we can't have nice things.

[ReoDobbs]

I'd recommend on green 2.0 that when they break something with a patch they don't take a year to fix it

[Disease]

I'd recommend on green 2.0 that when they break something with a patch they don't take a year to fix it

Maybe try Burger King where you can have it your way?

[Dural_Levant]

The /list bullshit can easily be solved by not removing items like manastone or make them rare drops after the timeline. I think any item that wasn't retroactively removed or changed should remain droppable somehow. They'll never do this though because reasons reasons reasons #nochanges. And the elite players will be happy because their main objective is making sure everybody else has less fun and somebody buys their manastone for 800k someday so they can twink out a dozen melee alts to solo blackburrow with.

But let's be real, most of us are here to have the experiences we missed out on when we were young and didn't know anything about the game. Cucking people out of that experience isn't part of Classic - people were actually friendly and nice in 1999. Shit, most servers only had 1 raid guild. People were happy sitting around chatting while killing a few mobs every 18 minutes. They even grouped with wizards and hybrids and didn't complain about "mah xp/hour".

The argument that most players had crappy dial-up internet to stop mass AoE also applies to camping an item for days at a time. Few people shared accounts in 1999 and even fewer could tie up their phone line for days at a time. The /list feature doesn't resemble the Classic experience whatsoever and was only implemented so GMs didn't have to babysit these camps.

tl;dr Green 2.0 = don't remove items like Manastone, CoS, etc in timeline.

Out of curiosity, why were manastones originally removed back in the day?

[Toxigen]

consider blue

[ReoDobbs]

Out of curiosity, why were manastones originally removed back in the day?

Considered OP like most items that got removed

[Keebz]

Out of curiosity, why were manastones originally removed back in the day?

IIRC it was becoming a req for a cleric to have a manastone for guilds/raids, and the devs didn't like that.

[oldschoolguy]

i wouldn’t touch it if book staring to med is a thing. would be neat if there was a pure classic server, no expansions at all.

[eqravenprince]

would be neat if there was a pure classic server, no expansions at all.

I would love that. Classic is best!

[Gustoo]

i wouldn’t touch it if book staring to med is a thing. would be neat if there was a pure classic server, no expansions at all.

You can't say you want a vanilla server and then say you don't think that looking at the book to meditate is not okay can you?

Having to look at the book to meditate is one of the draw backs of being a caster, a class type that is better in almost every single way than a melee. But they gotta focus on their studies.

Wish there was a way to have the locked in solid viewport UI.

[eqravenprince]

You can't say you want a vanilla server and then say you don't think that looking at the book to meditate is not okay can you?

Having to look at the book to meditate is one of the draw backs of being a caster, a class type that is better in almost every single way than a melee. But they gotta focus on their studies.

Wish there was a way to have the locked in solid viewport UI.

Just give blind effect and all noises are muted so you can't even hear a giant walking near lol

[Ooloo]

Yeah book medding is classic af. And getting to the point of not needing to do it anymore is like a rite of passage for casters, I was honestly kind of bummed it was removed as early as it was.

[Dural_Levant]

You can't say you want a vanilla server and then say you don't think that looking at the book to meditate is not okay can you?

Having to look at the book to meditate is one of the draw backs of being a caster, a class type that is better in almost every single way than a melee. But they gotta focus on their studies.

Wish there was a way to have the locked in solid viewport UI.

So, thematically I agree with you. It makes sense that meditating means you have to focus to gather your power and that the drawback is you are unaware of your surroundings.

However, in practice, I remember it got real old and super boring fast. I remember being so happy back in the day when you could just sit and med and not have to stare at that book. In retrospect, I wish they had made meditating a sort of mini-game. Something, fun and active, that you did to get your mana back faster.

[Obrae]

The player base can never revert back to classic

So in that regard we can avoid, hopefully, this time, forcing broken mechanics that were never a part of the game for way , way , waaaaaaaay too long. That were not part of the classic experience. Can be avoided.

Ex.
-Pets over 34 not existing by accident on EQ release, it was never experienced in classic, fixed as soon as it was discovered.
-Abuse of clicky that were not part of classic experience, lets not wait too late

I am sure people can think of others that are possible to fix to recreate the classic experience. Unless i am wrong and what were are trying to simulate is to have the same 0's and 1's at the same dates, without taking into account the consequences.

The simulation is great, but we must take our distance of those who do not understand the difference between reproducing the classic experience and reproducing numbers. I repeat, the player base can never revert to classic. The server will be filled with 50's in no time and i believe, for the best experience, we need to account to that.

[Imposter]

Still hasnt fixed how dark everything should be at night. Before next server launch, pls fix the immersion factor of blind characters at night. #lightstonesmatter

[Gustoo]

Still hasnt fixed how dark everything should be at night. Before next server launch, pls fix the immersion factor of blind characters at night. #lightstonesmatter

Don't beg for this, because what they implemented on green made you run dynamic lighting completely fucking the performance of the game in the ass, and then was not classic at all hyper dark with unnatural wall of brightness around the player when player had a light source.

I don't know if they can fix the human barb erudite blindness issue on this version of the game without it being terrible (and not classic)

[AenorVZ]

Just read this entire thread hoping that there were 15 pages of additions to Videri's excellent breakdown. Instead it's 15 pages of suggestions for how to make a more custom/less classic server that would be better placed on TAKP's forums.

Here's my addition. I took about a month break approximately one month after release because there were no mage pets past either level 24 or 29 (I forget) in game. These pet spells were not available on a vendor and the ability to research these spells was not implemented until about two months into the server's life.

This implementation was a result of a pre-release thread by Dolly that I wish I could find. Dolly was able to demonstrate through documentation that the implementation of mage pets that was adopted for Green followed the actual timeline of 1999 vanilla release. As such, I supported these changes even though it negatively impacted me on a server where I decided pre-release to play a mage as a main for the first time.

Some additional thoughts. Everquest is the greatest game ever made, but it failed to reach its full commercial potential because of short-sighted design decisions that created massive bottlenecks. For example, on Green (where I'm a retired Seal Team member), at one point Seal Team had over 150 Sleeper's Tomb keys while the rest of the server combined had maybe 10.

As a result, it was within Seal Team's discretion to wake the Sleeper and deny warder loot to the rest of the server. There are four warders and if you kill all four they never spawn again on the server. If you only kill 3 and leave the fourth up, they will spawn indefinitely and you can continuously farm some of the best items in the game (e.g. Sceptre of Destruction, the single most valuable tradeable item in the game).

https://wiki.project1999.com/Sceptre_of_Destruction

I was glad that I got the opportunity to be in Seal Team because for the first time in 20+ years of playing, I got to be a part of the top guild on a server during the Velious era. I played on Vallon Zek from the day it launched in 1999. I ended up quitting during the Velious era in part because raids became so difficult that it required a massive zerg guild like Defiant to clear all of the content. I didn't want to be in a zerg and realized that the small family guilds that I preferred would never see end game content, so I left the game before Luclin was released.

Others have correctly pointed out the distinction between Everquest and WoW. I wouldn't still be playing the game 23 years later (not currently playing on P99) if it wasn't for the direct competition over content. When I played WoW beta and saw the implementation of instancing, I didn't make it past the first month of launch. Even though every server I've played on prior to Green I was on the losing end of those bottlenecks, it was the challenge of the competition between the haves and have nots that kept me coming back.

I agree that there needs to be a better implementation of the list system but I don't know what that would look like. I only encourage those of you posting here to stop trying to turn this into a custom server project. It's never going to happen so you're wasting keystrokes.

From what I've read, many of the content decisions that led to the extreme bottlenecks of EQ were driven by Brad's sense of competition with Fires of Heaven, the guild that defeated all of the content in Everquest beta. He kept trying to throw things at them that they couldn't overcome and was continuously disappointed in how easily FoH beat everything that was thrown at them.

I'm guessing this was part of the decision to make the penultimate content in the Velious era -- warder loot in Sleeper's Tomb -- subject to an unpredictable nerf that only became common knowledge once enough servers had killed all four warders and had the best loot in the game permanently and irrevocably removed. I think this was Brad's way of finally sticking it to FoH, which was undoubtedly one of the first guilds to clear Sleepers on live. You got there first, but you screwed yourself in doing so.

This is a really dumb way to design a game. If there's any truth to this version of events, it means decisions were made that affected the bulk of Everquest's player base that were driven by the actions of less than 1% of the population. This is why I think WoW was so successful. It created a reasonable expectation that an average player would eventually be able to see end game content.

Green has been a remarkably accurate representation of what vanilla eq release looked like. A single guild was able to exploit the existing, known bottlenecks to its exclusive advantage. If there's to be a Green 2.0 I hope that the dev team will consider that they don't need to do the same thing again. I don't know how they would change it without further customization but I think it's worth considering that an emu project doesn't have to continuously emulate the worst mistakes that the original game made, which kept it from reaching its full potential.

Green 2.0 advice for would-be raiders, nostalgia seekers, and the content-curious (a work in progress - feel free to add your input and maybe I'll turn this into a Wiki article or something)

Things to watch out for on future Project 1999 timeline servers. Warnings to the casual and hardcore alike. A crystal ball of what might be in our future on the next server.


————————————————————
CLASSIC / VANILLA / PRE-KUNARK
————————————————————

—Launch era—

Crowded newbie zones
Expect to camp the spawn point of a decaying skeleton while 99 other people rush around KSing each other.

Legacy camps: Manastone, Guise of the Deceiver, Rubicite Breastplate, Drelzna JBoots
There will be 10-20 players standing at these camps around the clock. Each character will have to wait 3-5 days to get their item. To accomplish this, groups of players will take turns on a single character. The list mechanic allows a 15-minute grace period in case of connection loss. This allows one player to camp out and another player to log in to the same character. Players will take shifts in this way to keep that character on the /list for long enough to get the item. If you cannot do this or are not willing to share account info, you may not be able to get these items. These camps were camped by 10-20 people 24/7 from the moment it was possible to camp them until the moment they were removed from the game.

My druid Naala spent 87 hours on the manastone list. Each night, one of my friends would play her for 6 hours so I could sleep. I would keep my laptop with me the other 18 hours of every day for 4 and a half days. That’s how you get a manastone. If you can’t do that, you won’t be able to camp a manastone. You can farm a lot of plat and buy one.

—Plane of Fear—

Planar rotations
Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Fear during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can.

Plane of Fear legacy items
Lustrous Russet armor, the legacy item Plane of Fear armor, will be farmed assiduously by those who know about it. It is the same as Indicolite armor (the later Plane of Hate warrior armor), but it is usable by all plate and chain classes. Expect clerics and shamans wearing Lustrous Russet Boots, rogues wearing Lustrous Russet Breastplate, bards wearing Lustrous Russet Bracer, and more.

Spinechiller Spiders drop the Cryosilk Robe, but only until Plane of Hate comes out. In later eras, this robe is trash, but it looks really good.

Fear Golems 1.0
Initially, Fright, Dread, and Terror don’t drop anything at all. They also don’t death touch or have any AEs. One of them blinds the tank (surprise!). They are just large golems with no loot table.

—Plane of Hate—

Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Hate during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can. The level cap is still 50, so it’s quite difficult. Expect to wipe sometimes.

—Plane of Sky—

The Ishva Mal for Summon Corpse
It was announced that Plane of Sky would be “competitive” for the first two weeks. As the release date of Plane of Sky approached, experienced players realized Summon Corpse might be necessary to quickly progress a whole guild through Plane of Sky (get some players keyed to the next island, have other players die on purpose and summon their corpses to the next island, and rez them).

As soon as The Ishva Mal was added to the game, <Seal Team> began permanently camping it, rotating in shifts and holding the camp indefinitely. They did not keep a camp list. Other players asked to camp the Ishva Mal after them, but they did not respond to /tells. They held the camp for many days. Other guilds were incensed.

Players petitioned them until finally the GMs implemented a /list mechanic for the Ishva Mal. Only necromancers could join the /list. Due to the 36-hour spawn time of the Ishva Mal, necromancers had to stay at the camp for hours or days at a time. Most necromancers did not bother.

“Competitive Sky” did not end up happening. The guilds quickly agreed on a weekly rotation. Also, it turned out nobody used Summon Corpse that much to advance in Plane of Sky. So the round-the-clock camping, the drama and rage, the petitioning, and the /list torture was all for nothing. the end

Plane of Sky while the level cap is 50 is a form of torture
During this era, when the level cap was 50, it took normal raid guilds 8-12 hours to clear Plane of Sky. Supposedly Seal Team would do Plane of Sky using almost exclusively mages, something like 20-30 mages, and that worked better when the level cap was 50.

--
Please post your own advice for players next server. Please reply with anything I missed or got wrong. I'll post my Kunark notes later.

[cd288]

I appreciate the thought and effort you put into that comment but tbh it’s a replay confusing comment. You say stop trying to make the server custom but then you say the staff needs to figure out a way to avoid bottlenecks being emulated etc….that would require customization

[AenorVZ]

A. All of P99's servers are custom servers. There were no rooted dragons in vanilla.

B. The post acknowledges the conundrum. I don't have the answer.

[starkind]

My advice for green two is enabling ffapvp all lvl ranges pvp skills hard-coded to lvl 60 stats 200 at all lvls in all zones. Disable exp loss. Allow ppl to ks train and bind camp. Make st nukes unresistable and do 70% dmg in pvp. Allow cleric nukes to land for full. Otherwise classic resists for root, slow, etc.

Randomize raid loot. Allow coin loot. Put in pvp vendors that give regen, clarity, port pots to various places all on a 10 second cast delay.

Only log in GMS to hunt boxers and hackers.

[MrSparkle001]

Others have correctly pointed out the distinction between Everquest and WoW. I wouldn't still be playing the game 23 years later (not currently playing on P99) if it wasn't for the direct competition over content. When I played WoW beta and saw the implementation of instancing, I didn't make it past the first month of launch. Even though every server I've played on prior to Green I was on the losing end of those bottlenecks, it was the challenge of the competition between the haves and have nots that kept me coming back.

I originally thought this too when I first played a game with instancing (was it WoW?), but then I realized it's superior. If you're a normal person with a job and a life you have limited play time and it will be in prime time if you're in the U.S. so the game is crowded, so you may never get a camp for an item. It's not even a competition at that point, it's just the simple fact that with your limited time you will find the good camps always taken. Want to camp the AC for those boots? Good luck. Maybe if you stay awake until 3 AM and someone gives up the camp.

Now every MMORPG has instancing. It lets you play at your pace and not have to poopsock or sacrifice your life.

I don't think DAOC had instancing, did it? It also didn't have much of a need to camp spawns in dungeons. It wasn't that kind of game. That's the game I left EQ for shortly after Luclin launch. EQ was fun but required way too much of a time commitment. If you weren't playing for hours every day and sacrificing your life on weekends to stay online you weren't getting the gear you wanted, and the game is all about getting gear. With DAOC it was a pleasant mix of much more casual and life-friendly PvE with fun PvP, neither of which required poopsocking and becoming a monitor-tanned shut-in.

Guess WoW was similar. I started in WOTLK and was already used to a more casual and life-friendly PvE, having left EQ's poopsocking far behind.

Not complaining that P99 emulates that. Not at all. The lower pop compared to live at the time and the simple fact that I only play games very casually now means that camping doesn't bother me. P99 is played for nostalgia and relaxation now and I actually can get camps here at the times I play.

[DMN]

I guess this is an opportune moment to once again bring up the suggestion I made when they unveiled the list mechanic before green launched:

Keep the list feature as it now is, but the legacy item will be randomly awarded to anyone at the camp/on the list. And dear no lifers, don't cry to me about it being random when the drop itself is random; we could theoretically go through the entire manastone drop period and not a single one of them actually drops.

It seems they compromised the classicality in order to combat people monopolizing these camps, yet all they have accomplished is empowering a different set of players to monopolize them on top of making it entirely impossible for a non-no-lifer to get the drops in situ.

[MrSparkle001]

Hmm what is the list mechanic? Is it a waiting list for the camp?

Because that really doesn't help much if you're not a monitor-tanned no-lifer. Ok it's finally my turn at 11 AM on a work day.

[Enloopious]

I've been waiting 23 years to get that Rubicite chest for my troll sk... I guess another 3-5 days is not too bad.

[Khaleesi]

I guess this is an opportune moment to once again bring up the suggestion I made when they unveiled the list mechanic before green launched:

Keep the list feature as it now is, but the legacy item will be randomly awarded to anyone at the camp/on the list. And dear no lifers, don't cry to me about it being random when the drop itself is random; we could theoretically go through the entire manastone drop period and not a single one of them actually drops.

It seems they compromised the classicality in order to combat people monopolizing these camps, yet all they have accomplished is empowering a different set of players to monopolize them on top of making it entirely impossible for a non-no-lifer to get the drops in situ.

We said this before it even came out, however since there was conveniently no actual proper BETA test for Green...well there was not much time to evidence how much of a bad idea it was

Hmm what is the list mechanic? Is it a waiting list for the camp?

Because that really doesn't help much if you're not a monitor-tanned no-lifer. Ok it's finally my turn at 11 AM on a work day.

See above quote
In summary, it's a move to empower carebears and also relieve administration actions from staff. In the end it achieved neither and was non classic as well


-=-=--=-=-=-
The only modified things I can think of that I'd even bother considering are :
The UI/target system that allowed tab targeting and multiple hotbars, with real time pet health showing
Otherwise, I'm pretty OK with #nochanges


As for actual custom, I'd be open to

No waking of Kerafym
Some instancing - not sure they could achieve it though you arrange it like this :
The zone is instanced, the mechanics are classic. This means that you would still want all the same raid setups, preparations, COTHs, raid characters parked on ledges, etcetc; with someone facecamping for spawns as the mobs could appear any time - which would result in something akin to a batphone and mobilization effort as we do now.
[Note, GINA and similar would not be allowed ideally. Facecamping means facecamping, not afking a laptop somewhere in your house and then when GINA triggers you get an SMS message on your phone while you're at the movies, then it auto forwards a notice to your guild leader who then battexts everyone - like come on, make the effort]


What you'd have less of is the facepalm that is what we had with Blue/Green when raid bosses would appear and undue chaos would ensue as everyone tripped over each other.
[[Consider that the competition is enjoyable to some degree yet it becomes less enjoyable when it's as saturated as it is due to all the years of knowledge gained and there's a monopolization]]



Rebuttal I can see is that instancing ruins zones that have mixed content - meaning dungeon groups and raid bosses. I agree it's an interesting part of EverQuest in contrast to later MMORPGS
I did say 'some' zones would be instanced, though whether it was many or a select handful, on balance I'd accept instanced dungeons. It would just mean that while you don't get the pros you lose some of the cons such as not having people train you, or hop over your group or that you have to leave because it's over camped. Meanwhile for ones that did not get instanced, they could a few of them to a no staff intervention list, and do what was done with Veeshan's Peak.

Imagine having all of Sebilis to yourself, move from camp to camp as you like?
Or that now NTOV is a free for all!

It would significantly cut back on staff involvement as well ; less disputes raised, less disputes to manage.

Either way let's just be thankful these servers exist and hope that they will be around for another decade (and maybe even better, that the staff someday give out the source code and stand behind their commitment to provide fans an opportunity to continue enjoying it - instead of paying only lip service)

[Coridan]

The only real way to fix the /list problem is either

1 - Remove legacy items from the start.

2 - Completely re-itemize the game and bring back the classic bit of discovering what items exist, where they drop, etc.

Otherwise /list is the best solution for the current situation. Without it certain guilds will monopolize content and abuse the PnP policies just like they did with Summon Corpse.

[meconium]

My advice for green two is enabling ffapvp all lvl ranges pvp skills hard-coded to lvl 60 stats 200 at all lvls in all zones. Disable exp loss. Allow ppl to ks train and bind camp. Make st nukes unresistable and do 70% dmg in pvp. Allow cleric nukes to land for full. Otherwise classic resists for root, slow, etc.

Randomize raid loot. Allow coin loot. Put in pvp vendors that give regen, clarity, port pots to various places all on a 10 second cast delay.

Only log in GMS to hunt boxers and hackers.

This would be way too cool, id bet that would get the attention of people whove never played EQ

[arc]

Others have correctly pointed out the distinction between Everquest and WoW. I wouldn't still be playing the game 23 years later (not currently playing on P99) if it wasn't for the direct competition over content...it was the challenge of the competition between the haves and have nots that kept me coming back.


there's a reason games aren't made like this anymore

spoiler alert: it's because it's shitty design

[Goldknyght]

there's a reason games aren't made like this anymore

spoiler alert: it's because it's shitty design

How is having a goal in a game S****y design?

[arc]

For Jboots it was just different characters.

For everything else it was value. I just came back to the project like a month and a half ago, and selling a single manastone got me caught right back up. A few late nights where I click a button a few times an hour while watching shows was an easy way to set myself up for the rest of this Green. I'll do it again on Green 2.0.

this is not behavior the game should encourage

[MrSparkle001]

How is having a goal in a game S****y design?

Big difference between having a goal and a game encouraging poopsocking.

As great a game Everquest is/was it's also a great example of what not to do when developing a MMORPG.

There's a reason MMORPGs followed WoW's example and not Everquest's.

[eqravenprince]

I think some good ideas have been posted. It would be interesting to see if two servers which one would have the higher population.

1. Server EasyMode - EQ with a whole bunch of quality of life changes.

2. Server HardcoreMode - EQ warts and all.

[Goldknyght]

Big difference between having a goal and a game encouraging poopsocking.

As great a game Everquest is/was it's also a great example of what not to do when developing a MMORPG.

There's a reason MMORPGs followed WoW's example and not Everquest's.

id have to disagree. They followed WoW trying to make money thinking thats what gamers wanted. Why they all fail. WoW was only successful to me because of the warcraft brand.

[bomaroast]

Raid size limits would fix most P99 problems, excepting of course for Charm lasting too long relative to actual classic.

[eqravenprince]

Big difference between having a goal and a game encouraging poopsocking.

As great a game Everquest is/was it's also a great example of what not to do when developing a MMORPG.

There's a reason MMORPGs followed WoW's example and not Everquest's.

Go to a WoW forum and you'll find people complaining about WoW. No game is perfect. Wow is a themepark and every kid gets a trophy, some people like that. EQ is a world, it is beautiful, yet simple in design, complete sandbox with good people and bad people. The biggest gripe in EQ is endgame lacking enough content and the bottlenecks that occur when the server becomes top heavy. This could easily be fixed without turning it into WoW.

[DMN]

Raid size limits would fix most P99 problems, excepting of course for Charm lasting too long relative to actual classic.

Most of the server(s) population doesnt even raid. Not surpsingly your other hawt take is similarly detached from reality.

[Coridan]

Go to a WoW forum and you'll find people complaining about WoW. No game is perfect. Wow is a themepark and every kid gets a trophy, some people like that. EQ is a world, it is beautiful, yet simple in design, complete sandbox with good people and bad people. The biggest gripe in EQ is endgame lacking enough content and the bottlenecks that occur when the server becomes top heavy. This could easily be fixed without turning it into WoW.

I think in our situation the only way to really fix it is custom content. Nilbog and Rogean have the data on server size and the experience to create some new raid zones/targets.

They could repurpose some PoP zones or something, or perhaps add some new targets, perhaps ones inspire by classic lore like Mayong Mistmoore, Megalodon, Big Bynn, maybe make some good aligned ones too, put some neat loot on the mayor of Rivervale and make all the guards come to help him.

We've done Green now. We've had the classic experience. Now let's improve on it while keeping within the spirit of it and not going to the moon.

Let's make Kerra (not Vah Shir) playable while we're at it.

[Raj]

Luclin was possibly greatest expansion ever - why? AAs appealed to cool & normals or people who hate having to cheese-zerg content to improve their fav chars w loot alone. Bazaar was a nice bonus to people wanting to save loads of time buying/selling. Global chat channels are amazing too. The only people who hate these are antisocial raiders that want to mostly despise and avoid talking to the 80%+ of the server whom isnt in the guild of the character they are currently playing.

Velious was the worst expansion ever - a few pretty zones nice for niche group experiences or loot but mostly raid content appealing to the most hopelessly addicted or pixel hungry players.

Sorry, P99 ends at the worst expansion of the classic timeline. :o

[Ivory]

We've done Green now. We've had the classic experience. Now let's improve on it while keeping within the spirit of it and not going to the moon..

Nooo, we gotta restart a new server and classic experience again. Set it up so it repeats after the sleeper wakes up... a new server is born and the adventure begins anewww.

[aynn]

Luclin was possibly greatest expansion ever - why? AAs appealed to cool & normals or people who hate having to cheese-zerg content to improve their fav chars w loot alone. Bazaar was a nice bonus to people wanting to save loads of time buying/selling. Global chat channels are amazing too. The only people who hate these are antisocial raiders that want to mostly despise and avoid talking to the 80%+ of the server whom isnt in the guild of the character they are currently playing.

Velious was the worst expansion ever - a few pretty zones nice for niche group experiences or loot but mostly raid content appealing to the most hopelessly addicted or pixel hungry players.

Sorry, P99 ends at the worst expansion of the classic timeline. :o

I agree. There isn't enough content here to support the amount of players. That's why I'm playing on another private server that goes up to Planes of power. Having a blast with all the new content.

[MrSparkle001]

Go to a WoW forum and you'll find people complaining about WoW. No game is perfect. Wow is a themepark and every kid gets a trophy, some people like that. EQ is a world, it is beautiful, yet simple in design, complete sandbox with good people and bad people. The biggest gripe in EQ is endgame lacking enough content and the bottlenecks that occur when the server becomes top heavy. This could easily be fixed without turning it into WoW.

Oh WoW certainly wasn't perfect but it did have instancing, I think automatic grouping after a while, queueing for dungeons after a while, battlegrounds for PvP. It did a lot of things right and opened up the genre to a lot more gamers.

Everquest required a lot of poopsocking, where you'd be tempted to call out of work for a day or two to camp the ancient cyclops or something, if it wasn't already camped in which case you were screwed for a while.

I think where Everquest really shined was the atmosphere of the various zones and the faction system. No other MMORPG has captured either of them. There's something about their clever use of colored fog, limited rendering distance, massive tree trunks with no leaves etc. that gives Everquest a very large and imposing atmosphere in certain zones.

[Coridan]

Nooo, we gotta restart a new server and classic experience again. Set it up so it repeats after the sleeper wakes up... a new server is born and the adventure begins anewww.

Oh for sure! I definitely say start Green over before implementing any custom content and add it in organically. Could also take the opportunity to reitemize some stuff and rebalance as well so no more /list. Maybe make all group ports require some kind of 50p stone reagent as a money sink.

With regards to Luclin I liked it too, but the Nexus and Bazaar were bad for the community nature of the game, and the Luclin models did not age as well as classic models.

[socialist]

My biggest memory from early Green is how rampant the AFKing in groups was. Seriously, I feel like there was on average two group members AFK at any given time. Leeching was so shameless at times that I had nights where I joined three different groups in a row where I had to leave all of them again because people were AFK 75% of the time.

[zillabunny]

Very depressing. Thank you.

[zillabunny]

No Legacy Items. Period.



Total opposite direction

Everyone autogranted jboots at 25 mask at 30 manastone at 40 10x drop rate in plans when unark drops everyone gets a CoS. Super fun server

[Ghost of Starman]

With regards to Luclin I liked it too, but the Nexus and Bazaar were bad for the community nature of the game, and the Luclin models did not age as well as classic models.

Oh yes, so much community is built sitting in EC for hours or watching a twitch stream of auction chat hoping that an item or spell in looking for for the last two weeks shows up, instead of, you know, playing the game.

[MrSparkle001]

My biggest memory from early Green is how rampant the AFKing in groups was. Seriously, I feel like there was on average two group members AFK at any given time. Leeching was so shameless at times that I had nights where I joined three different groups in a row where I had to leave all of them again because people were AFK 75% of the time.

This is one reason I don't group often. I go AFK all the time. If it's not bathroom it's phone or I'm cooking something or I have to go put the laundry in the dryer or something.

I actually like not having to dedicate time to a game, being able to leave the keyboard when I want.

I wasn't around for Green's start but I can imagine it was nearly impossible to find open camps. It was probably a lot like very early live in 1999 where you had to wait in line to get in an orc hill group in gfay?

[Old_PVP]

Green 2 isn't going to come for years, regardless of whether or not staff makes the right decision and makes red 2.0.

That’s the truth. So many unemployed neck beards lurking these forums just eating up content and crying for more, more, MOAR. Green isn’t even an old server, and these noobs want another one already… lol. Rogean probably still recovering from launching Green 1.0.

Years pals. Get used to it. That’s how long volunteer side hobby shit takes to get done when you aren’t an unemployed neck beard.

I hope they go with Red 2.0 first though, just to make the Green tears flow.

[bomaroast]

Green 1.0 is done. Vindi was dead within hours of velious releasing, the sleeper is awake and there is one, zerg guild dominating the server's raid mobs. She's done. We're ready for 2.0.

Except, the staff still has lots of RMT to do, so we've got another year to go.

[eqravenprince]

That’s the truth. So many unemployed neck beards lurking these forums just eating up content and crying for more, more, MOAR. Green isn’t even an old server, and these noobs want another one already… lol. Rogean probably still recovering from launching Green 1.0.

Years pals. Get used to it. That’s how long volunteer side hobby shit takes to get done when you aren’t an unemployed neck beard.

I hope they go with Red 2.0 first though, just to make the Green tears flow.

Pvp sucks, what a ginormous waste of time and money creating Red 2.0. Keep fighting the fight though, all 50 of you.

[Calmethar]

Here's a wishlist:
* Don't cater to just the hardcore. Remove these limited time overpowered items, that 99,9 % don't have any chance of ever getting, or leave them be, so everyone has an equal chance of getting them throughout the servers lifetime, as they're clearly not too overpowered for just the few select who obtain them.

* Implement some sort of Bazaar-AFK-trading-option in the EC Tunnel, so that e.g. EU time zone players don't have to spend weeks in between seeing select common items.

That would cater to the majority instead of just a select few, which is really what we all should be looking for.

[Chortles Snortles]

GUYS!!!! implement elf socialism!!!!
(lol)

[Calmethar]

GUYS!!!! implement elf socialism!!!!
(lol)

...

Catering to the majority is what keeps a game and server alive in the long run, not the other way around. And no, it has absolutely zero to do with "socialism", you'll have to do better than that.

[cd288]

...

Catering to the majority is what keeps a game and server alive in the long run, not the other way around. And no, it has absolutely zero to do with "socialism", you'll have to do better than that.

Uses the words “catering to the majority” while requesting the staff set up an AFK bazaar/auction house to make buying and selling easier for the minority (EU players). Lol

Anyway here’s some advice: most people don’t spend their time buying and selling in the EC tunnel if they don’t want to. You can post on the forums and in discord that you have stuff to buy or sell and usually find people to do a transaction with.

[Calmethar]

Uses the words “catering to the majority” while requesting the staff set up an AFK bazaar/auction house to make buying and selling easier for the minority (EU players). Lol

Anyway here’s some advice: most people don’t spend their time buying and selling in the EC tunnel if they don’t want to. You can post on the forums and in discord that you have stuff to buy or sell and usually find people to do a transaction with.

The main point of the entire thread being the time-limited items, though.

But making it less of a pain for non-US time-zone players, especially newer ones, to do some early trading would help them stick around more often. That was the point of that remark, feel free to suggest other things that could help the P99 servers in a healthy direction for all of us.

[Ripqozko]

Green 2.0 is like red 2.0, won't happen. Hope that helps.
Edit: remember discord server luls, still waiting 10 years later.

[PlsNoBan]

Green 2.0 is like red 2.0, won't happen. Hope that helps.
Edit: remember discord server luls, still waiting 10 years later.

Big part of me thinks green 2.0 won't ever happen but on the flip side I was skeptical that green 1.0 would happen so it's hard to say for sure. The lack of communication about plans for the future from the powers that be make it very difficult at times to have any faith in stuff like this. It may not be actually true but it FEELS at times like they don't really care too much about this project and they've just been running in maintenance mode. I could be totally off base and maybe they're truly passionate about it and are putting lots of unseen work in behind the scenes. But it's hard to see any of that as a player.

[cd288]

The main point of the entire thread being the time-limited items, though.

But making it less of a pain for non-US time-zone players, especially newer ones, to do some early trading would help them stick around more often. That was the point of that remark, feel free to suggest other things that could help the P99 servers in a healthy direction for all of us.

I mean there's no issue with players sticking around though? The only reason we have less than 1k per server is because we have two servers. If you merged them the servers would have pretty close to the average population that was on most servers during the Kunark and Velious era (maybe like 300 less or so but not significant).

So there's nothing that needs to be done from a population health perspective for P99.

[cd288]

Big part of me thinks green 2.0 won't ever happen but on the flip side I was skeptical that green 1.0 would happen so it's hard to say for sure. The lack of communication about plans for the future from the powers that be make it very difficult at times to have any faith in stuff like this. It may not be actually true but it FEELS at times like they don't really care too much about this project and they've just been running in maintenance mode. I could be totally off base and maybe they're truly passionate about it and are putting lots of unseen work in behind the scenes. But it's hard to see any of that as a player.

This is the exact same thing people said about Blue for years and then Green 1.0 happened eventually.

Likewise, Green 2.0 will eventually happen. The question is just will it happen sometime next year (as it seemingly should if the plan is to just constantly be re-rolling a fresh server once the old one reaches its timeline)? Or will it take longer than that because staff is moving slower on it.

[Calmethar]

I mean there's no issue with players sticking around though? The only reason we have less than 1k per server is because we have two servers. If you merged them the servers would have pretty close to the average population that was on most servers during the Kunark and Velious era (maybe like 300 less or so but not significant).

So there's nothing that needs to be done from a population health perspective for P99.

Again, the main point of the entire thread being the time-limited items, though.

With a healthy direction I didn't just mean population-wise.

But there's always something to be done from a population aspect, as when the bulk of those players reach max. level and some of them eventually grow tired for whatever reason, the servers will always need fresh players to keep the grouping options open throughout the leveling range.

And perhaps 1.5-2k would be a healthier number for both servers, also making it much more possible and viable to actually fire up a third server.

[cd288]

Again, the main point of the entire thread being the time-limited items, though.

With a healthy direction I didn't just mean population-wise.

But there's always something to be done from a population aspect, as when the bulk of those players reach max. level and some of them eventually grow tired for whatever reason, the servers will always need fresh players to keep the grouping options open throughout the leveling range.

And perhaps 1.5-2k would be a healthier number for both servers, also making it much more possible and viable to actually fire up a third server.

What third server? They’re merging green and blue if they ever do green 2.0

[PlsNoBan]

What third server? They’re merging green and blue if they ever do green 2.0

Careful you'll summon the crazies. Some individuals of questionable mental state believe that somehow P99 can support 3 healthy pop servers and they'll leave green/blue both running independently when they start the next server. Despite the fact that the avg p99 playerbase numbers haven't drastically changed for basically the entire duration of it's existence. Some peaks and valleys here and there. Definitely a spike (for a short time) when green launched hence the whole green/teal thing. Obviously most people understand that there aren't enough people interested in this project to support 3 servers with healthy pops running concurrently though. Unless you think like 400-500 concurrent at peak times is healthy. I personally think a good goal is like 1000-1300 players at peak for a server.

Blue and Green both feel a little underpopped to me personally. Soooo much of the world feels empty at like ~800 peak player counts. The popular zones will always have people but good luck getting groups outside the handful of zones everyone congregates in. I could be wrong but I felt like the world was far less empty and many more zones got used when blue was rocking like 1200+ player peaks.

[cd288]

Yeah it’s really based on this weird flawed subconscious feeling those people have that somehow if their characters are merged to blue then it’s pointless to play them. I still really love playing my chars on blue. I did original green but honestly I’ve been having so much fun on blue lately I might not do green 2.0.

Moving a character to blue isn’t a death sentence

[Calmethar]

What third server? They’re merging green and blue if they ever do green 2.0

And perhaps 1.5-2k would be a healthier number for both servers, also making it much more possible and viable to actually fire up a third server.

Note the "perhaps", "possible" and "viable" in that sentense. The point actually being, that the current P99 servers could indeed have both healthier populations and move in a healthier direction for the majority in general.

And who's even to say if a third PvE server isn't an option íf P99 actually catered more to the majority instead of the strict "TLP"-patch-approach, which is e.g. the exact thing that rewards the 0.1 % with the time-limited items in question.

The main point of the entire thread still being , as you're seemingly deliberately missing, the time-limited items, which was mainly what I adressed in my first post in this thread.

[Coridan]

Blue and Green both feel a little underpopped to me personally. Soooo much of the world feels empty at like ~800 peak player counts. The popular zones will always have people but good luck getting groups outside the handful of zones everyone congregates in. I could be wrong but I felt like the world was far less empty and many more zones got used when blue was rocking like 1200+ player peaks.

This is an issue with the game's design inherently. It's meant to support a larger population, but that population is expected to be spread across the levels more. As it is, not only is it heavily weighted towards the top after about 6 months from launch, once Kunark comes out twinking becomes the norm and even when people make alts they twink em so much they can usually blow through the early levels in a week or two.

Other MMOs have made attempts to fix that stuff (like level requirements on items, platinum sinks to get currency out of the world, sidekick/mentoring), but without remaking EQ you can't really do it here.

[cd288]

Note the "perhaps", "possible" and "viable" in that sentense. The point actually being, that the current P99 servers could indeed have both healthier populations and move in a healthier direction for the majority in general.

And who's even to say if a third PvE server isn't an option íf P99 actually catered more to the majority instead of the strict "TLP"-patch-approach, which is e.g. the exact thing that rewards the 0.1 % with the time-limited items in question.

The main point of the entire thread still being , as you're seemingly deliberately missing, the time-limited items, which was mainly what I adressed in my first post in this thread.

To be honest it sounds like you just don't really like classic EQ. Which is fine. There are other servers out there that might be what you're looking for.

[Calmethar]

To be honest it sounds like you just don't really like classic EQ. Which is fine. There are other servers out there that might be what you're looking for.

No, you're wrong, I very much like classic EQ, just not the one to one "TLP" way of doing it, which is why I'm commenting here about specifically the time-limited items, which I really, really dislike.

But it sounds like you're deliberately dodging most of what's coming your way, so I'll leave you to your one straw man argument after the other, as you clearly just don't want to respond to what's actually being written directly to you.

[cd288]

Except time-limited items are classic....

[Chortles Snortles]

mad about guise and manastone
(lol)

[Zill]

The thing about Classic EQ is that back when Classic was classic, there weren’t intense zealot neck-beards that had spent 20 years figuring out how to minmax the game in every imaginable aspect. When people complain that p1999 kinda sucks in some ways because of those neck-beards, it tends to be the neck-beards telling them “well that’s just Classic EQ!”

I mean, it would be Classic EQ without so many poop-sockers ruining the experience. All the people complaining for a Green 2.0 are just poop-sockers that weren’t able to get Manastones on green and want to try again.

[Calmethar]

Except time-limited items are classic....

I didn't state otherwise. Is that your fifth straw man argument just up until this state. Sad.

Leaving time-limited items as is for the entire lifespan of a server or removing them entirely wouldn't make that particular server "non-classic" in any way, shape or form – as Zill writes, even "classic" isn't really "classic" here in 2022...

[cd288]

I didn't state otherwise. Is that your fifth straw man argument just up until this state. Sad.

Leaving time-limited items as is for the entire lifespan of a server or removing them entirely wouldn't make that particular server "non-classic" in any way, shape or form – as Zill writes, even "classic" isn't really "classic" here in 2022...

Removing item from game entirely = Not classic

Making them drop forever = Not classic

So, again, seems like you're not a fan of certain aspects of classic EQ. Which is all good, you don't have to be, but if you're not then you might want to find a server that has what you want (which seems to be "either allow me the opportunity to camp certain items for the entire life of the server, or delete them entirely if there's a chance someone else might have one but I won't").

[PlsNoBan]

This is an issue with the game's design inherently. It's meant to support a larger population, but that population is expected to be spread across the levels more. As it is, not only is it heavily weighted towards the top after about 6 months from launch, once Kunark comes out twinking becomes the norm and even when people make alts they twink em so much they can usually blow through the early levels in a week or two.

Other MMOs have made attempts to fix that stuff (like level requirements on items, platinum sinks to get currency out of the world, sidekick/mentoring), but without remaking EQ you can't really do it here.

That's certainly part of it but not all of it. 8 years or whatever into Blue it was basically just as topheavy as it is now and it still had much healthier population and less empty zones than before green launched. The numbers are just the numbers. I've logged into blue at 600-700 players and found velks nearly empty multiple times in the past couple of months. Same with howling stones. The only high lvl zone you can reliably find more than a few random people in is basically karnors from what I've found. Anecdotally I also had a much easier time finding low lvl groups pre-green. It's much easier in my experience to find groups at all level ranges when the primetime pop is 1000+ than it is at 600-800.

Edit: It's currently a Tuesday at 5:30pm EST and Blue has 550 Green has 750 players. I'm sure both will go up a little closer to around 7-8pm. But imo having under 800 on each server at 5:30 is kinda rough.

[Calmethar]

Removing item from game entirely = Not classic

Making them drop forever = Not classic

So, again, seems like you're not a fan of certain aspects of classic EQ. Which is all good, you don't have to be, but if you're not then you might want to find a server that has what you want (which seems to be "either allow me the opportunity to camp certain items for the entire life of the server, or delete them entirely if there's a chance someone else might have one but I won't").

A server can certainly be classic without doing 1:1 patches. You do know that you can't wind the clock back to actual '99, right...

And no, "cd288", I'm not talking from an "I" perspective here, but from a healthier server in general perspective as in what would benefit the majority and health of the servers the most in the long run, as stated numerous times by now. But you seem very stuck in a "me, me, me"-perspective, so I get why you wouldn't understand something like that.

And enough with your childish "go find another server" arguments, as you very well know there are none even close.

[Zill]

Truly the only way to have a genuine "classic" EQ server is to create a classic server like P1999 but restrict populations based on playstyles.

Casual server for people with jobs and kids and lives, etc. Hardcore server for everyone else.

THAT's what Red should be imo - instead of wasting server space catering to the 5 guys that enjoy EQ PvP they should invert it and turn it into a carebear PvE space and call it Pink

[Jibartik]

The round-the-clock camping, the drama and rage, the petitioning, and the /list torture was all for nothing.

vmoYpJIUWhY

[cd288]

A server can certainly be classic without doing 1:1 patches. You do know that you can't wind the clock back to actual '99, right...

And no, "cd288", I'm not talking from an "I" perspective here, but from a healthier server in general perspective as in what would benefit the majority and health of the servers the most in the long run, as stated numerous times by now. But you seem very stuck in a "me, me, me"-perspective, so I get why you wouldn't understand something like that.

And enough with your childish "go find another server" arguments, as you very well know there are none even close.

Except you’re acting like your opinion is some massively held opinion that makes all these large numbers of people go “well I would play P99 if it wasn’t for them making manastones classic”

In reality, there aren’t really any of those people. Theirs not some huge group of people sitting around just waiting for P99 to take manastones out of the game in order to join the server. The server is just fine. We have close to 2k pop a lot of the time across both servers.

You can have your opinion but stop acting like you just have some altruistic intention in mind to help all these people play P99

[cd288]

Also does anyone think this guy types a LOT like DSM? Lol

[Calmethar]

Except you’re acting like your opinion is some massively held opinion that makes all these large numbers of people go “well I would play P99 if it wasn’t for them making manastones classic”

In reality, there aren’t really any of those people. Theirs not some huge group of people sitting around just waiting for P99 to take manastones out of the game in order to join the server. The server is just fine. We have close to 2k pop a lot of the time across both servers.

You can have your opinion but stop acting like you just have some altruistic intention in mind to help all these people play P99

No, wrong again, I've never said that either, so maybe you should just stop being such a smart-arse all the time, huh.

Here's what I said: "Here's a wishlist".

And no, "cd288", I'm not "acting", I do have an altruistic intention, mainly to get younger generations interested in the great aspects of old EQ. And time-limited items for one is the opposite of that. But e.g. leaving them as is for all to enjoy throughout the lifetime of a server might actually very well attract a few more players, get them to stick around longer, or even spread the word of the fun to be had.

The same goes for trading as long as the majority of players are in just one specific timezone. The option of e.g. AFK-trading as well in the tunnel wouldn't ruin everything that's "classic". That's just a desperate attempt of an argument, as no one can really define what "classic" actually is, as it's very much an individual thing. It doesn't have a set in stone definition, so you don't get to decide what's exactly "classic" and what's not, "cd288". It's about the game and the servers, not about some overused silly term that doesn't define anything in actuality.

As in if the game closed down for an entire day back in '99, it wouldn't be true "classic" if that didn't also happen in 2022. It doesn't work like that, it's a new day and it's a new game, so throwing around that imaginary "classic" term gets us nowhere.

But now we're at it, there's definitely more that could be added to the list of catering to new and younger players, to get them interested in the niche genre that is the great aspects of old EQ. One example could be removing both the race and class exp. penalties entirely from the "timeline". Another could be to add "Trivial loot code" for a good deal of lower level nameds, so that lower level players actually have the chance of "getting lucky" with a drop now and then, instead of seeing anything worthwhile being camped 24/7 by level 60 players, who could earn more plat per hour by just grinding anyway.

And I'm sure there's a lot of other options that could be discussed as well to benefit the servers a great deal in the long run. You, for one, are clearly not willing to do that, and that's fine, but stop throwing straw man arguments my way if you've got nothing actual to contribute with anyway.

Also does anyone think this guy types a LOT like DSM? LolI told you to stop with the childish arguments, "cd288". That should be easy enough to comprehend.

[cd288]

No, wrong again, I've never said that either, so maybe you should just stop being such a smart-arse all the time, huh.

Also from Calmethar: "But there's always something to be done from a population aspect, as when the bulk of those players reach max. level and some of them eventually grow tired for whatever reason, the servers will always need fresh players to keep the grouping options open throughout the leveling range. And perhaps 1.5-2k would be a healthier number for both servers, also making it much more possible and viable to actually fire up a third server."

TLDR for the second quote above: Said in the context of the population would be larger if we got rid of time limited items either by removing them or making them drop forever.

Seems like you definitely said what I said you did huh?

[Calmethar]

Also from Calmethar: "But there's always something to be done from a population aspect, as when the bulk of those players reach max. level and some of them eventually grow tired for whatever reason, the servers will always need fresh players to keep the grouping options open throughout the leveling range. And perhaps 1.5-2k would be a healthier number for both servers, also making it much more possible and viable to actually fire up a third server."

TLDR for the second quote above: Said in the context of the population would be larger if we got rid of time limited items either by removing them or making them drop forever.

Seems like you definitely said what I said you did huh?

No, I specifically did not, smart-arse, but you keep purposefully dragging things completely out of context to try to suit your twisted straw man arguments, as you got nothing to contribute with whatsoever, that's crystal clear to everyone by now.

Here's what I wrote:
But making it less of a pain for non-US time-zone players, especially newer ones, to do some early trading would help them stick around more often. That was the point of that remark, feel free to suggest other things that could help the P99 servers in a healthy direction for all of us.

And the part you cut out of your quotation above:
With a healthy direction I didn't just mean population-wise.

I was quite clearly adressing the AFK-trading option, and even more clearly stating that I didn't just mean population-wise.

And here's where "cd288" goes completely haywire. This quote from "cd288" below here was specifically what I was directly quoting and adressing while I stated No, wrong again, I've never said that either

Except you’re acting like your opinion is some massively held opinion that makes all these large numbers of people go “well I would play P99 if it wasn’t for them making manastones classic”

In reality, there aren’t really any of those people. Theirs not some huge group of people sitting around just waiting for P99 to take manastones out of the game in order to join the server. The server is just fine. We have close to 2k pop a lot of the time across both servers.

You can have your opinion but stop acting like you just have some altruistic intention in mind to help all these people play P99

That has absolutely nothing to do with:
Said in the context of the population would be larger if we got rid of time limited items either by removing them or making them drop forever.

Zip, zero, nothing. Clutching at straws like a mad. What a forum-warrior.
"cd288", dragging things completely out of context since '99. Or were you even born there.

Enough with the children's games, troll. Find someone elses posts to blatantly harash.

[PabloEdvardo]

These camps were camped by 10-20 people 24/7 from the moment it was possible to camp them until the moment they were removed from the game.

That's not even close to true. Manastone, Jboots, Rubi BP, and Guise all had relatively low numbers for the first month or two.

It wasn't until after the Teal and Green merge, and the month prior to the nerf, at which point the situation you're describing occurred.

I did all of those list camps prior to the merge.

Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Fear during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can.

Also not true. Guilds were competing for FTE on spawns. Guilds showed up when mobs were respawning and if they got FTE they would OOC the message. It was highly competitive.

In addition, next launch, mobs will have an 8-16 hour window, instead of just 8 hours, which will change this dynamic greatly.

Expect clerics and shamans wearing Lustrous Russet Boots, rogues wearing Lustrous Russet Breastplate, bards wearing Lustrous Russet Bracer, and more.

The hate armor is supposed to drop in Plane of Fear until Hate is added when it's moved there. Green did not implement this properly. As far as who will wear what, everyone will be seeking out LR armor regardless of class. The bracer and gauntlets are the most sought after items and hardest to acquire.

Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Hate during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can. The level cap is still 50, so it’s quite difficult. Expect to wipe sometimes.

Again, not entirely true. Not all guilds participated in the UN agreements, some went up and competed for FTE on spawns. It also wasn't purely an 8 hour block rotation, most guilds got a day or two including multiple blocks.

Supposedly Seal Team would do Plane of Sky using almost exclusively mages

Correct. If you want to farm PoS in classic, you need a mage army with lvl49 air pets. This also means that "Words of Incarceration" will be in extremely high demand. You can farm them off things like the Imps in SolB near Efreeti.

[loramin]

It wasn't until after the Teal and Green merge, and the month prior to the nerf, at which point the situation you're describing occurred.

This was not true, for the manastone camp on Teal at least. That camp had a full list (with maybe an average of five people on it) for months prior to the merge. I know because I tried (and sadly failed) to get one.

Also does anyone think this guy types a LOT like DSM? Lol

He does strongly resemble DSM.

[PabloEdvardo]

This was not true, for the manastone camp on Teal at least. That camp had a full list (with maybe an average of five people on it) for months prior to the merge. I know because I tried (and sadly failed) to get one.



He does strongly resemble DSM.

It was true on Green

Edit: In general, I agree with the sentiments in this thread that something needs to be done about p99 raiding and content progression.

Again and again we've been told that this isn't about creating a 1:1 forensic reproduction of classic everquest, but that some non-classic changes are because they want the game to give the classic experience when playing. Meaning, they want it to feel like you're playing in 1999 again.

I did NToV on Live across two servers, two "uber" guilds, and both of them did not pull the dragons. We would move them slightly within their lairs or pull them maybe down a hallway, but we weren't doing entrance pulls and kiteouts and trains. Rooting the dragons actually does bring the experience closer to what it was like on live. This is one example of how they've used non-classic changes to produce a classic experience.

So I also believe they need to strongly reconsider things like having multiple servers or raid content spawn rates or instancing. The number and intensity of raid guilds on these servers is unlike the majority of the experiences that players had on live. On live each server had raiding guilds which stuck to "their lane", and because new content was always coming out (new expansions, progression) rather than guilds competing for the top content, they progressed their members along the content and geared them up along the way. Once a player was geared through previous content in one guild, they would often leave and join the next guild up.

We see this a little bit in p99 with how guilds will be doing fear/hate in kunark while other guilds are chasing kunark dragons and VP, but once velious is reached and progression ends, the natural stratification of the guilds goes away completely.

In addition, p99 is extremely top-heavy when left to one server. Since 2-3 guilds on p99 all end up targeting the same "tier" of content, yet the spawn rates of the monsters is unaffected (and arguably even worse due to variances), players end up with a non-classic experience when it comes to loot availability. If on a Live server you only had maybe 100-150 players in an uber guild needing to be equipped on their mains, on p99 players often have 2 or more raiding level characters they regularly use, meaning with multiple guilds you might have 600-800 characters competing for the same drop availability.

Unlike Live when a guild would get every single spawn of specific bosses until they chose to progress past it, with competition on p99 guilds often get only a percentage of those kills.

All of this compounds into extremely low average loot availability for most players, and because progression dies at Velious, the top guilds never stop wanting Velious loot, and continue to farm it for years for their new members and alts, meaning other guilds are actually still actively prevented from progressing naturally to those bosses like they were in classic and kunark.

tl;dr is that more non-classic changes could do a lot to restore the classic raid experience on p99 instead of this completely non-classic competitive system with a fraction of the loot available per member

ideas like: get rid of variance, quadruple the spawn rate, add automated random weekly quakes, allow guild+character based instancing with lockouts, increase the number of items dropped per table, have multiple servers running the same timeline so you only have one uber guild per server, etc.

what we have today is NOT a classic experience, and this comes from someone who did progression raiding on live across multiple guilds, on two servers, and who also raided Green with a top guild, doing all the content

[Calmethar]

Also does anyone think this guy types a LOT like DSM? LolHe does strongly resemble DSM.No, I don't.

[Calmethar]

ideas like: get rid of variance, quadruple the spawn rate, add automated random weekly quakes, allow guild+character based instancing with lockouts, increase the number of items dropped per table, have multiple servers running the same timeline so you only have one uber guild per server, etc.

what we have today is NOT a classic experience, and this comes from someone who did progression raiding on live across multiple guilds, on two servers, and who also raided Green with a top guild, doing all the contentAll good suggestions, which should be discussed, as there should always be room for improvement.

Simple lockout timers, not even instanced, would by itself make for a much more enjoyable experience for everyone, as the respawn rate could even be instant then.

[cd288]

This was not true, for the manastone camp on Teal at least. That camp had a full list (with maybe an average of five people on it) for months prior to the merge. I know because I tried (and sadly failed) to get one.



He does strongly resemble DSM.

Dude seriously, like even down to the post formatting. Normally people joke when they’re like found someone’s alt forum account, but in this case I really think it might be lol

[PlsNoBan]

No, I don't.

That's exactly what DSM would say honestly

[Gloomlord]

I mean, if it is DSM, kind of weird that his alt account is 4 years older and has less than 30 posts.

[Calmethar]

I mean, if it is DSM, kind of weird that his alt account is 4 years older and has less than 30 posts.Spot on.

[cd288]

I mean, if it is DSM, kind of weird that his alt account is 4 years older and has less than 30 posts.

Maybe DSM was the true alt account all along

[Toxigen]

hi dsm

[Calmethar]

That's exactly what DSM would say honestly

;)

Find a post and compare 'em by all means, and you'll immediately see that it's indeed not the case.

[Chortles Snortles]

https://i.imgur.com/tl5NITy.jpg

[Coridan]

It was true on Green

Edit: In general, I agree with the sentiments in this thread that something needs to be done about p99 raiding and content progression.

Again and again we've been told that this isn't about creating a 1:1 forensic reproduction of classic everquest, but that some non-classic changes are because they want the game to give the classic experience when playing. Meaning, they want it to feel like you're playing in 1999 again.

I did NToV on Live across two servers, two "uber" guilds, and both of them did not pull the dragons. We would move them slightly within their lairs or pull them maybe down a hallway, but we weren't doing entrance pulls and kiteouts and trains. Rooting the dragons actually does bring the experience closer to what it was like on live. This is one example of how they've used non-classic changes to produce a classic experience.

So I also believe they need to strongly reconsider things like having multiple servers or raid content spawn rates or instancing. The number and intensity of raid guilds on these servers is unlike the majority of the experiences that players had on live. On live each server had raiding guilds which stuck to "their lane", and because new content was always coming out (new expansions, progression) rather than guilds competing for the top content, they progressed their members along the content and geared them up along the way. Once a player was geared through previous content in one guild, they would often leave and join the next guild up.

We see this a little bit in p99 with how guilds will be doing fear/hate in kunark while other guilds are chasing kunark dragons and VP, but once velious is reached and progression ends, the natural stratification of the guilds goes away completely.

In addition, p99 is extremely top-heavy when left to one server. Since 2-3 guilds on p99 all end up targeting the same "tier" of content, yet the spawn rates of the monsters is unaffected (and arguably even worse due to variances), players end up with a non-classic experience when it comes to loot availability. If on a Live server you only had maybe 100-150 players in an uber guild needing to be equipped on their mains, on p99 players often have 2 or more raiding level characters they regularly use, meaning with multiple guilds you might have 600-800 characters competing for the same drop availability.

Unlike Live when a guild would get every single spawn of specific bosses until they chose to progress past it, with competition on p99 guilds often get only a percentage of those kills.

All of this compounds into extremely low average loot availability for most players, and because progression dies at Velious, the top guilds never stop wanting Velious loot, and continue to farm it for years for their new members and alts, meaning other guilds are actually still actively prevented from progressing naturally to those bosses like they were in classic and kunark.

tl;dr is that more non-classic changes could do a lot to restore the classic raid experience on p99 instead of this completely non-classic competitive system with a fraction of the loot available per member

ideas like: get rid of variance, quadruple the spawn rate, add automated random weekly quakes, allow guild+character based instancing with lockouts, increase the number of items dropped per table, have multiple servers running the same timeline so you only have one uber guild per server, etc.

what we have today is NOT a classic experience, and this comes from someone who did progression raiding on live across multiple guilds, on two servers, and who also raided Green with a top guild, doing all the content

This might've been accurate for Blue, but not for Green, because we haven't gotten to Luclin launch in the timeline yet, so no, no one would be progressing past Velious.

What live did have was a more constant stream of new players and more frequent new servers. If a server started to get too top heavy the players in the third strongest would go to Torv or Tholuxe Paellis or whatever when it opened and be the top guild there and there would still be a ton of casuals and Perma lowbies to fill groups at all levels.

Here we have the equivalent of 3 or 4 of those top guilds making up 70% or so of the player base when really the content only supports two at the top, maybe three with Velious. Also the fact that at 60 there's nothing else to do. Maybe farm faction but no AAs to grind means no reason to group/get XP.

I love classic EQ, particularly the trip from 1-50 in pre-Kunark, but after that there's not much to do. It's why Green is supposed to recycle.

[cd288]

;)

Find a post and compare 'em by all means, and you'll immediately see that it's indeed not the case.

DSM loves telling people to go finds posts too

[Calmethar]

DSM loves telling people to go finds posts too

...

[Goldknyght]

...

Im 100% sure now cd288 is DSM not you. And my reason, DSM hasnt made one post on this topic. And DSM cant miss a thread ever.

[cd288]

Im 100% sure now cd288 is DSM not you. And my reason, DSM hasnt made one post on this topic. And DSM cant miss a thread ever.

Honestly how funny would that be

[Calmethar]

Im 100% sure now cd288 is DSM not you. And my reason, DSM hasnt made one post on this topic. And DSM cant miss a thread ever.:p

[Duik]

DSM= Don't Simulcrum Me.

[Videri]

bumping to prevent lock

[DeliciousHalflings]

Shouldn't remove legacy items. Period. Some of them offer so much of an advantage that it's genuinely unfair to people who don't want to cheat via account sharing to not be able to get one. It eventually only became tolerable once most of the items became pure novelty (Manastone is useful up until after PoP, if you knew how to make full use of it)

There's already so many changes to p99 to compensate for the uncontrollable shitty behavior from the community (variant timers, quakes, having to actually have GM enforced raiding rules, etc) that leaving in some things that will only add to the server population because people WILL play just to be able to farm one themselves. Same with Guise, Rubi, LR armor, etc.

Lotta people don't have the time to even make it to the appropriate level to farm the items themselves before they're removed. Things like legacy items only favor people like myself who work from home on their own schedule and can play as many hours a day as they want.

_______________
Another tip most people just won't think of...invite everyone you see until the group is full. 6 people gunning for mobs and splitting exp is gonna be a LOT quicker to get out of newbie areas than trying to kill things solo and getting killsteals or constant downtime.

(I'm not reading the entire thread, so sorry for repeated points)

[drackgon]

I am sad I am just now seeing this post from Naala, I will have to think on this some and post some helpful info. But Naala OP is very spot on.

One quick tidbit, and this sounds odd coming from an SK main.. Avoid Hybrids(bards are probably ok) if you can. It sucks but if you like playing with your friends, your going to hold them back. That Xp hit is huge, I had to play tons of extra hours to keep up with those I loved to lvl with. Tanking whites/yellow/red in Banded/Bronze is not a solid viable strat. Plus in long run Warriors are soooo much more needed come Kunark/velious. SK/Pally become add tanks, and mana pools for Enc to mana tap....

Will say SK/Pally are fun to play though!

[socialist]

I am sad I am just now seeing this post from Naala, I will have to think on this some and post some helpful info. But Naala OP is very spot on.

One quick tidbit, and this sounds odd coming from an SK main.. Avoid Hybrids(bards are probably ok) if you can. It sucks but if you like playing with your friends, your going to hold them back. That Xp hit is huge, I had to play tons of extra hours to keep up with those I loved to lvl with. Tanking whites/yellow/red in Banded/Bronze is not a solid viable strat. Plus in long run Warriors are soooo much more needed come Kunark/velious. SK/Pally become add tanks, and mana pools for Enc to mana tap....

Will say SK/Pally are fun to play though!

The class XP penalty is sort of divided across the group, so it really becomes a single-digit percentage. Doesn't really matter much. Considering how vastly superior hybrids are as tanks in leveling content, I'd always take a knight over a warrior. Warriors really are absolute trash outside of raids, and doubly so before they even get high-end weapons with good ratios and proper aggro procs.

Tanking in banded/bronze is just a matter of not foolishly insisting on leveling off of red mobs on a fresh server. That's a player problem.

[drackgon]

The class XP penalty is sort of divided across the group, so it really becomes a single-digit percentage. Doesn't really matter much. Considering how vastly superior hybrids are as tanks in leveling content, I'd always take a knight over a warrior. Warriors really are absolute trash outside of raids, and doubly so before they even get high-end weapons with good ratios and proper aggro procs.

Tanking in banded/bronze is just a matter of not foolishly insisting on leveling off of red mobs on a fresh server. That's a player problem.

The Xp is split between the group, hence your going to force them to lvl way slower, and the amount of times I would be in a 6 man group with say a bard or ranger. Those groups got awful xp. I 100% agree Knights crap all over warriors in Classic and in groups. But if your goal is to play with friends when you can, they are probably going to out lvl you unless you 100% play the same times. I spent tons and tons of hours soloing to make sure I kept up with my friends. But again at least SK could solo:) a 60% xp hit vs a 10% int caster or 0% druid/shmmy/cleric. Its nearly impossible to keep up.

Lol tanked to 50 in bronze minus like 4 pieces, fighting whites/yellows/red it's doable just not done by the average player. Which again Avg player meaning 80% of p99 player base.

[socialist]

It isn't "way slower," it's like 7% less for the group. It isn't even noticeable unless there's like 3-4 hybrids in the group.

[Fammaden]

My experience was that a group would invite a bard, a paladin, or an SK but they would have second thoughts on a troll/ogre unless they were thirsty for a tank. But most avoided rangers like the plague, and adding a second hybrid was not ideal to most.

But really the penalty is primarily only punishing to the person leveling the hybrid. And even then I'd be ok considering it up to level 50, but leveling 51+ after Kunark with a 40% penalty is BRUTAL, and the penalty stays in for a long ass time. Its there for all of Kunark and into Velious I believe, fuck that.

More power to the people leveling bards and rangers for Velious raiding efforts but it won't be me.

[Fammaden]

Shouldn't remove legacy items. Period. Some of them offer so much of an advantage that it's genuinely unfair to people who don't want to cheat via account sharing to not be able to get one. It eventually only became tolerable once most of the items became pure novelty (Manastone is useful up until after PoP, if you knew how to make full use of it)

There's already so many changes to p99 to compensate for the uncontrollable shitty behavior from the community (variant timers, quakes, having to actually have GM enforced raiding rules, etc) that leaving in some things that will only add to the server population because people WILL play just to be able to farm one themselves. Same with Guise, Rubi, LR armor, etc.

Lotta people don't have the time to even make it to the appropriate level to farm the items themselves before they're removed. Things like legacy items only favor people like myself who work from home on their own schedule and can play as many hours a day as they want.

Or just don't have legacy items at all. The point has been made that lots of servers in the classic era opened up after the items had been removed already. The legacy camps cause a ton of problems and greed and shit behavior in the community and impacts server culture so hard. Keep them out of green 2.0 and add them back in for 3.0 maybe.

But I know this isn't happening, so best we can hope for is a revamp of the /list system.

[DeliciousHalflings]

Or just don't have legacy items at all. The point has been made that lots of servers in the classic era opened up after the items had been removed already. The legacy camps cause a ton of problems and greed and shit behavior in the community and impacts server culture so hard. Keep them out of green 2.0 and add them back in for 3.0 maybe.

But I know this isn't happening, so best we can hope for is a revamp of the /list system.

Leaving them in > not having them at all. Leaving them adds more things for people to camp at endgame, rather than more bottlenecking for other camps. There is no benefit to taking them out. It's p99. There is no actual discipline for people who fuck around. There's gonna be camp problems whether they're left in or not.

[Jimjam]

It isn't "way slower," it's like 7% less for the group. It isn't even noticeable unless there's like 3-4 hybrids in the group.

And even then the main reason it is slower is because that is 3-4 less pets doing npc dmg instead of PCs using 6/22 weapons unhasted with only 100 str.

[Fammaden]

Yeah to be fair its hard to get in a group as a rogue too for that reason.

[DeliciousHalflings]

Yeah to be fair its hard to get in a group as a rogue too for that reason.

I'm gonna be maining Druid and will gladly aggro kite with a Rogue duo when I get lonely. Rogues are just a DoT that can die.

[cd288]

Or just don't have legacy items at all. The point has been made that lots of servers in the classic era opened up after the items had been removed already. The legacy camps cause a ton of problems and greed and shit behavior in the community and impacts server culture so hard. Keep them out of green 2.0 and add them back in for 3.0 maybe.

But I know this isn't happening, so best we can hope for is a revamp of the /list system.

The point about server openings is nonsensical. If that’s the argument we’re going with then Green 2.0 should just start a couple months before velious.

[socialist]

On a fresh server, there's such an incredible shortage of tanks that nobody will give a flying fuck about the XP penalty. Even as a ranger, which was what I rolled on day 1 of green, I don't think I spent more than five or ten minutes LFG at any given time for the first month. It's the same thing right now pre-50, by the way. Try leveling a char lately? There will be literal entire days where you go from group to group and gain multiple levels in your 30s without ever having a tank. At best you'll have a monk, and even that is kind of uncommon because 75% of the people who make monks now are fungi twinks who just solo to 45ish.

Playing any tank class on a fresh server is like being the sole girl at a 90s LAN party. You'll get tells non-stop asking if you want to join groups. You have to go anon when you're busy so you can get some peace and quiet. Doubly so if you're a hybrid, because warriors kind of blow unless there's an earth pet. And since everyone's probably wearing banded at best for the first several weeks, and heals do a fraction of anyone's health bar, rangers are pretty much the best tanks until the plate-wearers start getting some real gear. The ability to hold aggro, provide snare in the process, and pull with Harmony in Unrest/MM/HK/CT, all while tanking every bit as well as a warrior, is just straight overpowered.

Nobody will ever even mention the XP penalty. Same goes for the knights, though they're so rare that it barely matters. The odds of having even two hybrids in a group are miniscule, and I don't think I saw three hybrids in one group through all of classic.

[Trexller]

how about rogean just pulls the plug on EQEMU and you all go touch grass