Everquest (No Expansions)

[qombi]

If you were to describe Everquest without expansions to a someone who has never played before, how would you best describe it?

Casters were king, hybrids were powerful, gear wasn't extremely powerful. Overall was a fun game, you could have a good time without raiding.

[Foxplay]

PetspamQuest

[qombi]

PetspamQuest

Nice one! I do like the original game without expansions. It has it's charm.

[Swish]

Necros needed a good nerf!

[shovelquest]

Real life.

[Ransurian]

PetspamQuest

True dat. I remember mage pets in particular being OBSCENELY powerful at the level 50 cap.

[qombi]

I am probably in the minority who would play one permanent Everquest server that never applied expansions. I enjoyed the expansions but the game changed to be raid heavy. I wonder how the game would evolve (devolve?) if it stopped before expansions and the server went on for years? Felt like a more laid back, experience then. Though everybody was really new to MMORPGs.

[Sonark]

I think that's the biggest distinction.

It was new. No one knew everything. But now, everyone knows everything, and if you don't, then fuck you. Learn or fuck off.

[eqravenprince]

I am probably in the minority who would play one permanent Everquest server that never applied expansions. I enjoyed the expansions but the game changed to be raid heavy. I wonder how the game would evolve (devolve?) if it stopped before expansions and the server went on for years? Felt like a more laid back, experience then. Though everybody was really new to MMORPGs.

EQ before expansions is my favorite version. I thought maybe I was the only one who felt that way.

[Ibex]

I am probably in the minority who would play one permanent Everquest server that never applied expansions. I enjoyed the expansions but the game changed to be raid heavy. I wonder how the game would evolve (devolve?) if it stopped before expansions and the server went on for years? Felt like a more laid back, experience then. Though everybody was really new to MMORPGs.

EQ without expansions is also my absolute favorite but that is probably because of the passing of time paired with the game being cracked open like a coconut. Kunark and Velious, as great and genuinely classic as they are, have trace elements of the lopsided top heaviness that would end up defining MMOs as they are today. Vanilla EQ very much feels like some nerds tricked investors into giving them money so they could make digital DnD for their friends. This feeling, while present in Kunark/Velious, is vastly overshadowed by the looming promise of the mountain top, especially so with the game being aged and figured out so thoroughly.

[mokfarg]

EQ without expansions is also my absolute favorite but that is probably because of the passing of time paired with the game being cracked open like a coconut. Kunark and Velious, as great and genuinely classic as they are, have trace elements of the lopsided top heaviness that would end up defining MMOs as they are today. Vanilla EQ very much feels like some nerds tricked investors into giving them money so they could make digital DnD for their friends. This feeling, while present in Kunark/Velious, is vastly overshadowed by the looming promise of the mountain top, especially so with the game being aged and figured out so thoroughly.

I love it. I couldn't put it into words but this is it! I bet though we are the minority, there will never be a Everquest classic server that stops before expansions.

[Swish]

If this server was made, would you want the Paineel/Hole update or not?

[Rader]

If this server was made, would you want the Paineel/Hole update or not?

Everything up to but not including Kunark

[cd288]

I would take Kunark, I think there are some cool zones there and the Iksar lore is really interesting.

Agree you could probably skip Velious even though it has a couple of my favorite zones...mostly a raid focused expansion.

[Swish]

Classic only raiding would get stale fairly quick, I think Kunark with epics and other shit to chase made the game's peak.

[Evia]

I love classic, kunark and velious. I agree classic felt the most authentic fantasy world...but kunark and velious didn't go too far off the original mark for me. Luclin totally did...and pop would have been good if it weren't for the pok books.

[Namsaknoi]

Interesting idea, would be nice to test such server that caps somewhere pre-Kunark (listed below update points), I joined during Kunark so I'm not too familiar with pre-Kunark but from seeing patch notes, below seem to be some key updates:

- Plane of Fear launch Jul 26, 1999, so CT loots and one more raid content, Russet and Cryosilk set
- Temple of Solusek Ro launch Oct 13, 1999, and update on Kedge Keep a couple weeks after, it seems this is the time where Manastone and Rubicite armor along with many other items became no longer dropping or questable, while introducing the mid-level class armors to replace the Rubicite and mid level quests (Temple of Sol Ro related or not, like Buring Rapier with pre-buff stats and Paw of Opolla)
- Plane of Hate launch Nov 3, 1999
- Plane of Sky launch Jan 20, 2000, even with pre-buff items, the quested items are really Kunark level gear stat-wise so probably less desirable for such server point
- Paineel launch Feb 17, 2000
- Kunark launch Apr 24, 2000
- The Hole launch Jun 22, 2000 (thus not really pre-Kunark)
Many items that exist and quest in classic zones that are too good for their difficulty should be post-Kunark only, like Dragoon Dirk (updated from something crappier), Ivandyr's Hoop, Fanged Skull Stiletto (GM event, turning Stano's Head to Hanns)

[Rygar]

Kunark and velious but scale back the melee weapons and items.

No fungi (maybe make +6 regen), items like t-staff would be 15/29 ratio, etc. They tried doing this with velious raid gear in ToV but everyone was already spoiled from kunark, so they buffed them.


No one handed melee weapons should exceed 11/24, should be God drops for that

[Old_PVP]

Sequels are rarely better than the originals. Obviously, if sequels / expansions are being made, it is because the original was damn good.

[Rygar]

Sequels are rarely better than the originals. Obviously, if sequels / expansions are being made, it is because the original was damn good.

This is true, very hard to do in MMOs specifically. Can alter existing world so content refreshes and you don't have too large of a world that becomes dead. Add more classes or races, new spells, new gods, bring in cursed weapons, etc. Maintaining balance is key. Instead of adding 30 new zones maybe only 1 or 2.

I really dislike any game where expansions make previous content irrelevant.

[ScottBerta]

I think P99 was the most fun when it was pre Velious.

[Sonark]

I think P99 was the most fun when it was pre Velious.

I think p99 was the most fun when it was an idea in someone's head.

Just like Classic was.

[Ciderpress]

The immense knowledge of every aspect of the game is what makes the experience different now. I remember my first char on live was a barbarian warrior, rolled like a week after the game was released. I vividly remember joining a full group of newbie barbs, and we worked together to take down wooly mammoths, cause it just seemed like an obvious thing to do. Today, you'd never, ever see that in a million years because it's a moronically slow and inefficient way to attain both xp and money, but damn it was fun. No clue what we were doing, but killing those big scary mammoths felt so epic.

[Zuranthium]

The game/genre being so new definitely contributed to what made 1999 Everquest special, but also people were actually roleplaying back then, and having no play nice policy added to that element of vitality. Instead of continuing to make the game into a lived-in RPG where people can progress by adventuring around, it was sadly turned into more and more of a streamlined, constricted experience with huge timesinks required to get the "best stuff". The entire genre was ruined because of this.

As things stand with the game these days, Kunark era is best. There's enough content to keep everyone busy, and the game world doesn't become so disconnected as it does in Velious, nor as tainted with overpowered gear and tedious raids. If forced to not stray very far from the in-game coding, an ideal emu server would be Kunark-era with the Velious-era class updates, some faster respawn times and more ways to obtain certain pieces of equipment, more level restrictions on equipment and power-leveling, and some of the raid encounters made more challenging (Innoruuk, Cazic-Thule, etc). Definitely a less restrictive play-nice-policy too. I also think that even for a non-PvP server it would be good and manageable for PvP to be a factor (can flag your character on/off for PvP once a week, gain more exp and some other benefit while it's on; enable PvP in raid areas sometimes; have guild-based PvP tournaments where the winning guild gets a bonus).

[Wakanda]

The immense knowledge of every aspect of the game is what makes the experience different now. I remember my first char on live was a barbarian warrior, rolled like a week after the game was released. I vividly remember joining a full group of newbie barbs, and we worked together to take down wooly mammoths, cause it just seemed like an obvious thing to do. Today, you'd never, ever see that in a million years because it's a moronically slow and inefficient way to attain both xp and money, but damn it was fun. No clue what we were doing, but killing those big scary mammoths felt so epic.

I think about this all of the time. Especially since I have friends who play P99, but never played EQ back in the day. It’s hard to explain to them that there were groups of players EVERYWHERE. Like I remember Qeynos and Qeynos Hills as a really populated area. Same with GFAY. It’s always surreal to me how they are ghost zones on these types of projects ��

Also part of the hunting random things like Mammoth back in the day.. I literally never logged into the game with the intention of grinding, every time I logged in it was a new adventure and I’d usually end up getting some loot and exp along the way because we would just try killing random things in random areas. We didn’t even know where loot dropped, so in my mind it was totally possible that an FBSS may drop in West Karana �� and there were all kinds of rumors. I remember the first time I saw an Ishva robe in game I freaked out and wanted it so bad, but the dude who had it straight up refused to tell anyone where he got it (not that it would have been an easy camp either way, 36 hours respawn and rare drop).

Edit I just remembered when I thought exe axe and oracle robes were among the best items in the entire game ��

[Sonark]

. Instead of continuing to make the game into a lived-in RPG where people can progress by adventuring around, it was sadly turned into more and more of a streamlined, constricted experience with huge timesinks required to get the "best stuff". The entire genre was ruined because of this....when do you think the Plane of Sky was implemented, approximately?

[Zuranthium]

...when do you think the Plane of Sky was implemented, approximately?

It came out January 2000, and less than 1% of the playerbase at the time was doing it. January 2000 actually marks a significant shift though. Lots of people got the game as a Christmas present at the end of 1999 and that created an influx of players who were trying to "catch up" and treating the game as less of an RPG. A couple months later the play-nice-policy was introduced, which was the official downfall of classic Everquest and the entire MMORPG genre.

Instead of updating the game by introducing non-static spawn mechanics and loot drops and NPC behavior, and other favorable updates to promote adventuring and world interaction instead of "camping", they limited what players could do and just kept adding more and more time-consuming static content onto the pile. Thus it became what the entire genre followed, with games like WoW dumbing things down as a defining feature and new generations of players never knowing what was lost.

[Sonark]

It came out January 2000, and less than 1% of the playerbase at the time was doing it. January 2000 actually marks a significant shift though. Lots of people got the game as a Christmas present at the end of 1999 and that created an influx of players who were trying to "catch up" and treating the game as less of an RPG. A couple months later the play-nice-policy was introduced, which was the official downfall of classic Everquest and the entire MMORPG genre.

Instead of updating the game by introducing non-static spawn mechanics and loot drops and NPC behavior, and other favorable updates to promote adventuring and world interaction instead of "camping", they limited what players could do and just kept adding more and more time-consuming static content onto the pile. Thus it became what the entire genre followed, with games like WoW dumbing things down as a defining feature and new generations of players never knowing what was lost.Just gonna die on the hill, then?

Alright.

[cd288]

The game/genre being so new definitely contributed to what made 1999 Everquest special, but also people were actually roleplaying back then, and having no play nice policy added to that element of vitality. Instead of continuing to make the game into a lived-in RPG where people can progress by adventuring around, it was sadly turned into more and more of a streamlined, constricted experience with huge timesinks required to get the "best stuff". The entire genre was ruined because of this.

As things stand with the game these days, Kunark era is best. There's enough content to keep everyone busy, and the game world doesn't become so disconnected as it does in Velious, nor as tainted with overpowered gear and tedious raids. If forced to not stray very far from the in-game coding, an ideal emu server would be Kunark-era with the Velious-era class updates, some faster respawn times and more ways to obtain certain pieces of equipment, more level restrictions on equipment and power-leveling, and some of the raid encounters made more challenging (Innoruuk, Cazic-Thule, etc). Definitely a less restrictive play-nice-policy too. I also think that even for a non-PvP server it would be good and manageable for PvP to be a factor (can flag your character on/off for PvP once a week, gain more exp and some other benefit while it's on; enable PvP in raid areas sometimes; have guild-based PvP tournaments where the winning guild gets a bonus).

All this guy's posts inevitably circle back to "I want to be able to grief people on a PvE server like you could for a very limited period of time when EQ first came out"

[Zuranthium]

Sad your comprehension is that low. 1 year is not a "very limited period of time" either.

[cd288]

Sad your comprehension is that low. 1 year is not a "very limited period of time" either.

IIRC the first rules against training, griefing, etc were released in the fall of 1999 (at least that's when we started being given those rules as CSR). Before that the GMs ran the server(s) they were assigned to the way they wanted to...so you could have some servers where GMs were imposing rules and others where there were like zero rules.

[Zuranthium]

DPS racing isn't griefing, it was part of the game for the entire 1st year. GM's could not go against that, it was the rule from the head devs, and players could call the actual support line and report GM's.

[cd288]

I wasn't talking about DPS racing I meant the general other things you'd see happening. Training for example. Rules about sharing camps, etc.

[Zuranthium]

There was no rule about sharing camps before the play nice policy. Everything was determined by who got the kill, or just the politics of not wanting to interfere with a camp because you think it will cause unwanted drama.

[cd288]

There was no rule about sharing camps before the play nice policy. Everything was determined by who got the kill, or just the politics of not wanting to interfere with a camp because you think it will cause unwanted drama.

I'm aware of that. My point was that those rules came out earlier than 2000 IIRC. At least I remember being told to now enforce camp sharing in late 1999

[Zuranthium]

My point was that those rules came out earlier than 2000

No they didn't. The PnP created a huge shift in the way people played the game. There was NO such thing as "camp enforcement" before that.