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View Full Version : Dev stories about Cracktusk, Allizewsaur, etc.


Ennewi
10-24-2022, 12:26 AM
https://web.archive.org/web/20021207141854/http://eqlive.station.sony.com/lowsrc/community/articles.jsp?id=50163

Why's there an elephant in that birdhouse?

GG: I remember when you guys first let out Cracktusk. You had him on zone-wide aggro.

JB: Nothing was funnier than Cracktusk.

GG: He'd come running across the whole zone just to get you. Cracktusk was this elephant in South Karana and he had this zone-wide aggro. I remember talking about this when we were guides. Like what're we supposed to do? They were like "nothing, he's content." Okay, fine. My job, when it got slow-which wasn't often-would be to follow Cracktusk and see what he was doing. He was getting 30 or 40 heads a night.

JB: The most hilarious thing was, that people would step across the South Karana zone border and stand on the bridge. Well Cracktusk would make a beeline right for them. And invariably Cracktusk would jump in the river. They'd be looking straight out and Cracktusk would be swimming through the river underneath the bridge, and as soon as he got to the player, he would pop up on top of the bridge and kill them.

GG: I love the guys who would go seek refuge in the top of the aviak camp, and Cracktusk would go "boom boom boom" all the way up to the top. And when he was done he would just jump off.

JB: I never saw that.

SC: I saw him go up. All the players are running up to the top, figuring there's no way he's coming up the ramps. Then he runs off after somebody else clear across the zone. It was great.

GW: That's where you know you're getting people who immerse themselves in the game. When they go up and look at this tower and say, "No way would that tower support an elephant. Why would the aviaks build a tower that would support an elephant's weight?"

GG: The only [way] he would get up there, which was so beautiful and poetic justice, if he tried to go through the towers he'd get stuck. But what was happening, on both of the towers, there was someone exploiting the aviaks there. So what he would do is, he would go up, see the guy exploiting the aviaks, kill that guy and go around. This was before they put in the exploit code. So he'd hit the one guy, go around and go all the way up to the top and jump off and away he went.

SC: There used to be dead people all the way up the ramps.

Where'd that Allizewsaur go?

MB: The Allizewsaur story with the boat. You've got to tell that story. It was a little while after release.

JB: No one has ever done anything to the Allizewsaur as far as changing his pathing. He's Godzilla. He's out on an island in the middle of the Ocean of Tears; he's a huge lizard that's colored differently from everyone else. One day a party was fighting it. And when he got down low on life, he turned around and ran, and rather than run away on the island he swam out into the middle of the ocean. It had something to do with where they pulled him, fighting him. And they're like what are we going to do now? We can't kill him. So they leave. And instead of coming back to the island once he heals, he swam around in the middle of the ocean and got onto the boat path. He went to the nearest pathing point and that was the path of the boat.

SC: He got onto a path he wasn't supposed to be on at all.

JB: So he goes over to Sisters Isle on the boat path and parks himself at the dock. But the thing is, at the end of the dock, it's really deep for the boat. So he's sitting there, like the Lochness Monster, with just his eyes and Allizewsaur above him. And by this time we've got a gang of people around the computer, and everyone's looking around wondering what's going to happen when the boat comes. And everyone's speculating is the boat going to pop on top of the Allizewsaur's head and make some ridiculous like boat out of the water thing, or is the Allizewsaur's going to pop up on top of the boat. And we looked and here comes the boat... loaded with people, because back in the day people couldn't teleport around. All of the spells were in after retail, but no one was high enough yet to have them. So we're sitting there, and I'm thinking the Allizewsaur is going to pop up on top of the boat, that's what's going to happen. Sure enough, the boat stately pulls up to the dock and stops. The Allizewsaur immediately jumps up on the deck with the players, just going *smash* and they're just dying instantly. He's huge, and players are all low level. People are like "Alli"... "Alizza"... and a bunch of letters and then die.

MB: We all sat there and rolled on the floor. We really weren't supposed to interfere with it. We really tried never to interfere. We sat around the computer going, what're we going to do?

JB: So the Marie Celeste takes off, everyone dead onboard, and the Allizewsaur drops back down off [the boat] and swims back to his island.

Of Early Bugs and Bind Anomalies...

JC: Remember when I went KOS in Qeynos?

JB: Who was that that you were killing? Oh that was Chanda Miller's boyfriend. He kept killing Chanda Miller's boyfriend, that gnoll, and turned KOS in Qeynos where he was bound.

JC: Back in the day, your bind point was South Qeynos right where you started the game, in the city.

SC: You were the one who actually made it so we put in the alternate bind points.

GW: The day that you guys enabled faction, everyone who was bound in the city-you know trolls and ogres started characters in the city, they'd die, pop in, die....

RE: There were people who would get bound in the air. I guess your bind point would get corrupted or something...

LP: Yeah...

RE: I remember one of the petitions I got from a guy, "I'm falling." And I'm like, "well you'll die...there's nothing I can do." He said, "no you don't get it, I'm continually falling."

GW: You know some of the bugs we had in beta were just really, really funny. One of the first ways I killed myself was with a damage shield, O'Keils radiation with a wizard. I'm like a level 12 wizard that I was playing for a while, and the way damage shields work, they would damage whoever damaged you by whatever means, so I'd cast O'Keils on myself and melee gnolls. So, inevitably, one day I finally cast a damaging spell on myself while O'Keils is on me. So, I cast a spell and it damaged me for casting a spell on myself, so 2 pts of damage. But then it damaged me again for damaging myself with the damage shield. It turned into a loop.

LP: One time I cast O'Keils on the thing you were fighting. I was like, "Ooops, sorry!"

JB: We're fighting goblins, and not only are these goblins tearing into us, we're losing huge amounts of hit points every time we hit them.

GW: Yeah, you could actually buff and heal NPCs back in the day.

DN: One time Kendrick was going to show me how to fight gnolls, and of course inside the tunnel they were just too tough, so we're fighting the one that's outside of Blackburrow. And we get him down real close, there were actually 3 of us fighting this one gnoll, and I hit lay on hands.

GW: I think it was your first day in game that we found that bug where you could kill other players.

LP: Oh you mean whenever they went link dead?

GW: Yeah, whenever anyone went LD it was like open season on them.

LP: That was mean though, he was like, "ok pull your plug." And I'm like, "I'm not pulling my plug!"

GW: I was trying to convince you, help me test something here real quick.

More old roundtable developer interviews can be found here (https://web.archive.org/web/20021207050330/http://eqlive.station.sony.com/lowsrc/community/articles_archive.jsp), for anyone interested. If anyone has or happens to find screenshots of these occurrences, please post them here. Will add screenshots if/when any can be found.

spoil
10-25-2022, 10:55 PM
Cool, thanks for posting this. Always interested in stories about the early days.

Jibartik
10-26-2022, 01:18 AM
this real neat

should green have cracktusk??

GW: That's where you know you're getting people who immerse themselves in the game. When they go up and look at this tower and say, "No way would that tower support an elephant. Why would the aviaks build a tower that would support an elephant's weight?"

magic

He's huge, and players are all low level. People are like "Alli"... "Alizza"... and a bunch of letters and then die.

https://i.imgur.com/NlmpYHf.png

nilzark
10-26-2022, 08:03 AM
Sounds like fun. Need more random anomalies like Cracktusk. Doesn't have to be everyday, but would be nice to log in occasionally and be surprised by something.

nilbog
10-26-2022, 09:51 AM
Cracktusk does exist on p99, but he is probably too rare. I'll look into it.

Fixed his aggro radius, pending update.

Chortles Snortles
10-26-2022, 10:00 AM
(lol)

nilzark
10-27-2022, 08:14 AM
Cracktusk does exist on p99, but he is probably too rare. I'll look into it.

Fixed his aggro radius, pending update.

:):):):):):):):):):)

Allishia
10-27-2022, 10:37 AM
Cracktusk does exist on p99, but he is probably too rare. I'll look into it.

Fixed his aggro radius, pending update.

Lmao

hobart
10-27-2022, 04:06 PM
Cracktusk does exist on p99, but he is probably too rare. I'll look into it.

Fixed his aggro radius, pending update.

Great troll if not serious. Awesome if serious.

magnetaress
11-04-2022, 12:42 PM
No one should have ever fixed this game or made it fair.

I remember all this stuff. And have been chasing that dragon ever since.

Jibartik
11-04-2022, 11:17 PM
Cracktusk does exist on p99, but he is probably too rare. I'll look into it.

Fixed his aggro radius, pending update.

Woohoo go get em cracky!

https://i.imgur.com/aka7go6.gif

Danth
11-05-2022, 10:03 AM
Prior to the Karana revamp Cracktusk was a fairly common spawn on P99--maybe too common--but only spawned from a single placeholder. Hence if nobody was killing the PH, he wouldn't spawn. If the PH was camped, he spawned regularly. I haven't paid attention since the Karana revamps.

Ooloo
11-05-2022, 04:56 PM
Yeah I saw cracktusk many many times on green, but he seemed to just follow verbatim a bull elephant spawn that would roam down to a hill west of aviaks and back.

I never knew about this zone-wide aggro thing though, that's hilarious. Please implement it!

cd288
11-12-2022, 12:35 AM
Cracktusk does exist on p99, but he is probably too rare. I'll look into it.

Fixed his aggro radius, pending update.

Please nilbog. Please say you’re serious.

Ennewi
11-22-2022, 03:03 AM
GG: The only [way] he would get up there, which was so beautiful and poetic justice, if he tried to go through the towers he'd get stuck. But what was happening, on both of the towers, there was someone exploiting the aviaks there. So what he would do is, he would go up, see the guy exploiting the aviaks, kill that guy and go around. This was before they put in the exploit code. So he'd hit the one guy, go around and go all the way up to the top and jump off and away he went.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000609034114/http://www.din.or.jp/~cai/eq/img/norrath05.jpg

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

Encroaching Death
11-22-2022, 01:04 PM
Cracktusk does exist on p99, but he is probably too rare. I'll look into it.

Fixed his aggro radius, pending update.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUsDXPSWoAUu9g-.jpg

Uthgaard
12-04-2022, 03:06 AM
https://hosting.photobucket.com/albums/qq121/mmiles01/EQ000003.jpg

Took me a while to unearth some of my classic screenshots

Encroaching Death
12-04-2022, 10:57 AM
Spirit Tome for 2k??

ick...

Lune
12-09-2022, 08:51 AM
Spirit Tome for 2k??

ick...

Classic EQ had some wonky pricing on things back in the day.

Ooloo
12-21-2022, 01:08 PM
Hahaha, saw the updated cracktusk for the first time. Confirmed he now spawns and makes a b-line for the nearest player. I was sitting on a safe hill and I saw him in the distance and realized he was coming right for me. I had to zone but I got a good laugh.

Encroaching Death
12-21-2022, 01:11 PM
Hahaha, saw the updated cracktusk for the first time. Confirmed he now spawns and makes a b-line for the nearest player. I was sitting on a safe hill and I saw him in the distance and realized he was coming right for me. I had to zone but I got a good laugh.

lol

Man, I need to visit SK sometime

My monk needs a Levi cloak still...

Reiwa
12-26-2022, 09:57 PM
Hahaha, saw the updated cracktusk for the first time. Confirmed he now spawns and makes a b-line for the nearest player. I was sitting on a safe hill and I saw him in the distance and realized he was coming right for me. I had to zone but I got a good laugh.

https://media.tenor.com/G95BkxxIfrAAAAAd/full-metal.gif

Castle2.0
01-02-2023, 04:16 PM
He exists. Ran into him recently. Or so the story goes.

Mingo
01-04-2023, 05:04 PM
Something odd about the 'devs' story there claiming Allizewsaur being killable by a group of players while also claiming that although portal spells were in the game nobody was high enough level to use the spells.

I think they should just come clean that they clearly placed the giant lizard there to grief the player base for their own entertainment. #classic.

Raj
01-04-2023, 06:17 PM
https://web.archive.org/web/20000609034114/http://www.din.or.jp/~cai/eq/img/norrath05.jpg

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

I started when the game first came out.. I remember when i was a troll warrior and me and my group got outta the swamp to sro. We spent an hours just exploring the grass part. Then we came to the desert part and were afraid to walk in the desert because we heard a rumor their was quicksand. I volunteerd to go first and it took me 2hours to cross it and my heart was pounding. When i got to oasis and saw crocs and SGs i was so scared but i made it to nro. Noone had ever seen a troll before and people actually thought i was some monster and tried to attack me damn those were the days. I still remember my first run from qeynos to freeport with my ranger. It was such an adventure going through the karana's and highpass. When it got dark and i couldn't see at all because there used to be a bug where you couldn't change the brightness. When i got to freeport i talked about my grand adventure with my friends.
I remember when you could tell if wisps had lightstones or not on them and i used to spend days on kerra island hunting wisps and filled countless backpacks full of them then i traveled to the other side of the world and sell them for 10pp a piece for GLS's. I remember when i had banded and 2combine longswords and people thought i was a god. People were so much more friendly back then and always helped and the GMs always helped everyone and won't power tripping asses like they are now. I remember when people said there were pirates and when i took a boat i was all scared and made a group on the boat incase pirates attacked. My first time in befallen was one of the most fun things. When i had my monk and grouped in befallen i was really curious and wanted to see what was down the well i jumped down and got swarmed on. I lost my corpse but i had a fun time. I still remmeber my first raid on lockjaw there was an army of level 14s and 15s attacking him lotsa of us died but we finally took him down and my monk got the LJ tunic. I thought i was a god. Other good memories i have are when my warrior first got his last name and a gm came and congratulated me and announced it to the whole server or when i first got crafted i got like 500tells that day people telling me congrats and asking how i got it. Then the big debate on how easy it was for warriors to get uber armor.. That was back when we didn't even have critical hits stuns and half as many hps and all that other stuff warriors got now. It makes me sad to think how great this game once was and how greed has made a once great game of adventure and roll playing turn into a game about phat lewt uber guilds and who is camping what.

Jimjam
01-04-2023, 07:38 PM
Something odd about the 'devs' story there claiming Allizewsaur being killable by a group of players while also claiming that although portal spells were in the game nobody was high enough level to use the spells.

I think they should just come clean that they clearly placed the giant lizard there to grief the player base for their own entertainment. #classic.

They just came across as arseholes to be honest.

Ennewi
01-05-2023, 08:55 AM
Hahaha, saw the updated cracktusk for the first time. Confirmed he now spawns and makes a b-line for the nearest player. I was sitting on a safe hill and I saw him in the distance and realized he was coming right for me. I had to zone but I got a good laugh.

Approx how fast? Differing accounts claim that it ran at, near, or possibly greater than SoW speed.

Baldcypress
01-12-2023, 10:48 AM
This was a great read! Thanks for posting

WokeCat
01-13-2023, 06:13 AM
It's sad how much crazy stuff happened in the early days that has been lost to time since there was no Twitch or YouTube back then. I saw a dev talking about Cracktusk on YouTube a while back:

sRLeVEuuLXM

(Kind of a long watch, but it's nice background noise to listen to while you're grinding).

He also said there was a random trash mob in PoF that dropped Cazic Thule loot, but it was placed in an area where most people would never find it.

Jimjam
01-13-2023, 06:21 AM
He also said there was a random trash mob in PoF that dropped Cazic Thule loot, but it was placed in an area where most people would never find it.

It is worth considering he is a guest on the show to provide entertainment. He's telling stories, and good storytelling includes embellishment and even fabrication. Even if he is attempting to be an entirely candid narrator he may misremember some details.

While a promising source, I'd take what he says with a pinch of salt.

WokeCat
01-13-2023, 06:27 AM
Classic EQ had some wonky pricing on things back in the day.

I genuinely believe that items are significantly more common on P99 than they were on EQ back in the day. I think the drop-rates are over-tuned for sure. You see it everywhere from Planar loot to regular items.

DeathsSilkyMist
01-14-2023, 01:20 PM
I genuinely believe that items are significantly more common on P99 than they were on EQ back in the day. I think the drop-rates are over-tuned for sure. You see it everywhere from Planar loot to regular items.

While the drops rates probably aren't classic, the inflation mostly comes from game knowledge. Back in the day a lot of people didn't know where certain items came from, and people weren't as good at the game. So naturally items were rarer, regardless of drop rate.

WokeCat
01-15-2023, 04:21 AM
While the drops rates probably aren't classic, the inflation mostly comes from game knowledge. Back in the day a lot of people didn't know where certain items came from, and people weren't as good at the game. So naturally items were rarer, regardless of drop rate.

My next door neighbor, who I pretty much haven't seen since high school, decided to camp Bilge Farfathom until they either got the Reed Belt or a PKT (both items sold for over 100K) on our server. His best friend, who was a Ranger, decided to help him. Both of them had track since my friend was also a Druid. They camped this dude in shifts for over 6 months, with one of them ultimately rage quitting the game because he finally saw Bilge after 6 months, and confirmed he had the PKT in his hand, but got away because he had SoW and was honestly a lot tougher than they had expected.

It just blows my mind how on P99 you can't walk outside of Unrest without seeing Bilge, and Reed Belts were dirt cheap even early on on P99 Green.

Planar gear is a really good example too. It took me like 3-4 months to get full Woven Shadow despite spending so much time in Plane of Hate that I had to drop out of high school. We literally killed every single mob that could possibly drop the armor, and it still took that long. Meanwhile you can take a rogue into PoH on P99 and have full planar gear halfway through a raid. The rogue weapons are even more insanely common, which blows my mind.

I didn't even know there was a possibility for those weapons to drop 20+ years ago despite regularly killing the same mobs that drop them non-stop on P99. Experienced something similar with Cleric PoH gear. Remember my girlfriend spending years to complete her set, now you just run in and get full planar gear almost instantly and it's just like.... yeah there's no way this is classic.

Runed Mithril Bracer was another good example (as was Mithril breastplate to a lesser extent). RMB sold for as much as Golden Efreeti boots on my server. Wasn't because Kobold Royals wasn't camped, and we lacked game knowledge. Was because you could spend 3 months camping Royals and never see an RMB. Meanwhile when Green launched I had like 8 RMBs in my bag anytime I did Royals, and I just regularly vendored the Mithril breastplate so I could loot another one (same item sold for 1500-2000p on my server due to its rarity). This is a camp I lived in as a teenager, I'm talking all day everyday, fighting other groups for mobs because the farm was that locked down.

Game knowledge for sure wasn't what it is now, but I know some camps like Royals were pretty much locked down around the clock and some items were still super rare. Actually remember spending a ton of time camping the ghoul arch magus in Lower Guk. I'm talking hundreds of hours. I had no clue that he was the same guy who dropped the SMR UNTIL I came to P99 and saw him drop it all of the time. I thought he just dropped crappy leggings, and that the real money maker for that camp was the adamantite bands / serp bracers, because you could spend weeks there and never once see an SMR and you would even wonder where that item must drop since it was super renowned and coveted back then (so was Oracle robe).

Danth
01-15-2023, 05:34 AM
It just blows my mind how on P99 you can't walk outside of Unrest without seeing Bilge, and Reed Belts were dirt cheap even early on on P99 Green.


Makes me wonder if Green and Blue have some differences in their spawns, or if something got borked on P99 more generally. I've been here 13+ years (albeit, I only dabbled on Green) and I've never seen Bilge even once. Likewise anyplace I camp, items don't fall out of the sky the way you seem to describe.

I did see multiple copies of a single NPC up in west wastes, an ongoing issue that might be somehow related, so I bumped that post as well, but across the game--on Blue--more generally I do not observe what you seem to. Maybe one of the community members who plays both servers heavily could chime in.

Danth

Kirdan
01-15-2023, 07:41 AM
Reed Belts were "common" on green because Artelius figured out how to spawn Bilge and farmed a ton of them with his ranger. He used that plat to buy the first puppet strings that hit the market shortly before they got nerfed, RIP.