rafaone
11-25-2011, 01:24 PM
Just found this post in ZAM yesterday, I think its quite interesting, and brings answer to some old school and classic both eq and MMO question, read:
Hah! I watched a few of those big guard vs PoD slugfests in GFay!
Supposedly the PoD can be killed, and he does drop a stupid staff with a skull on it - with horrible stats - and it's not the one that drops in... Naggy's Lair? The skull staff w/ the damage proc (which back in the day was an uber item for bards!).
Did you know summoned items used to be bankable and they didn't rot in the bank? You could keep summoned junk forever and pull it out and use it when you needed.
Oh, I was gonna talk about the holes in the world! Did you know there were holes in Norrath, big ones?
Either before Neclo or after they nerfed it, I made a DE Enchanter to make money by running the Stein of Moggok quest. I didn't even know I could pay for teleports - so I just ran the dumb quest: Misty/Rivervale for the Jum, Qeynos for the fish, Erudin for the tonic, bank for the kiola nut - then gate back to FP to get the book - then run to Oggok to get a stein.
Well, that was a long run - espeically aaaalllll the way across W Karana - until - I foung out about the "hole" or free TP. If you zoned into W Karana at the shore, entered the water, went under, and swam back the way you'd come - there was a "hole" - and you got a message that read something like "player under the world - moving to safe location." !!! And it moved you to Brother What's His Name's spot, the prayer bead guy - all the way across W Karana very near the zone to Q Hills! A free TP across the zone!
There was a way to TP across E Commons too when entering from the W Commons on the north rim.
Anyway, that was really cool til they fixed it, and you only teleported back to shore or back to where you'd zoned into the commons. Sigh.
The "holes" may still be there. Next time I'm in Karana I'll check - er - the Commons were redone - can't imagine that the old Commons hole is there (or where it could be).
It was common for Wizards and Druids to become "taxis" and port people around for money. If high lvls were late for a raid, they'd pay crazy money for ports - 50, even 100 plat! Wizards and Druids were more "afk" and/or "anon" than Clerics back then; these classes were constantly asked for teleports.
Did you know where "kiting" came from? In the first year or so of the game, Druids could either snare or root - but iirc not both (one overwrote the other). Also, DoTs did FULL damage if a mob was chasing the caster. I used to watch Druids DoT targets and run, literally like a kite trailing behind them on an unseen string! Thus, kiting - which sort of became an all purpose word for soloing.
But it was actually mobs chasing druids (or shamans or necros w/ jman boots or whatever). This was nerfed - one of the big, mean early bad nerfs - and what they did was to lessen the damage DoTs did if the target was pursuing (but not if it wasn't moving or running in fear). Well, Druids could charm animals, or root and be very hair trigger on the re-root - and then quadding was discovered (and then they decided to allow us to snare AND root at the same time, so root rotting became safe).
Now, it seems to me that DoTs do full damage even if the target is chasing you. The damage reported on my chat bar doesn't go down. Back in the old daze, dots iirc didn't report damage AND didn't tell you when they ended. Most people recast dots way, way too often. I'd sometimes try to count the seconds in my head. Sometimes you could see that hte target's health bar wasn't going down, so that meant recase the dots. Finally they changed this.
Why did druids back then "kite" often without snaring (before the nerf)? That's a good question. I typically saw druids kiting UNsnared targets - like Ogre bouncers in the Feerot. The druids just dotted several targets and ran around the edges of the zone. Maybe snaring used up mana and was unnecessary. Maybe the snares had worn off. Maybe the snares were resisted a lot. I dunno. I just know what I saw (I assume snares were perfectly okay to use) - but we all did have small mana pools compared to now. So who knows? I did see druids kiting snared victims, too - and kiting applied to either situation. Shamans kited unsnared victims, of course, cuz they have no snare (unless they worship inoruk and got hte clickie, but that didn't exist back then).
Gosh, any time I ran the Stein of Moggok quest, I hoped there was a raid on Oggok. Good chance you could pick up a free Crude Stein for some charisma. But they were lore, iirc, so you had to get rid of your stein - or park alts in or near oggok.
And to transfer stuff - did you know we didn't have shared bank accounts bakc then? People often went into an "unused building" and dropped items and/or money on the floor, where they'd parked the alt moments before. You logged in and hoped no one had seen you - or that there wasn't some crash - or you'd lose it.
Did you know you can't drop money any more because there was an exploit. It was reported that in the old player bazaar, people would trick others into putting money into a window at a campfire - but the fire graphic caused them to drop the money on the floor. The other guy would pick up the coin and then say "hey, you wanna buy it or not? I'm offering you a very low price!" The duped person would wonder why their 100 plat just vanished! I'm very glad I was never hit by this trick. Not sure if it was true, but lots of people said it was (maybe even verant/sony - my memory's fuzzy).
We could make things back then and sell em for a profit. Fish rolls! Bat wing and a fish. All sorts of crafted items could be made and sold to npc venders for a profit. I think most or all of these got shut down, people started botting them, or so the rumors had it. And there were lots of rumors. We had no ooc medding, so we sat around speculating and guessing a whole lot between fights.
EDIT - did you know there's a story to our term "nerfing?" Supposedly in some other game (an earlier MMO), an overpowered sword was accidentally put into the game. Then, they weakened it in a patch. Someone who had the killer swords said it was as if his mighty sword had been swapped for a "Nerf bat" - the child's foam toy - (this is why some people still say "the 'nerf bat' swingeth" or some such). I can't remember the game, though. Ultima Online?
Interesting? :D
Hah! I watched a few of those big guard vs PoD slugfests in GFay!
Supposedly the PoD can be killed, and he does drop a stupid staff with a skull on it - with horrible stats - and it's not the one that drops in... Naggy's Lair? The skull staff w/ the damage proc (which back in the day was an uber item for bards!).
Did you know summoned items used to be bankable and they didn't rot in the bank? You could keep summoned junk forever and pull it out and use it when you needed.
Oh, I was gonna talk about the holes in the world! Did you know there were holes in Norrath, big ones?
Either before Neclo or after they nerfed it, I made a DE Enchanter to make money by running the Stein of Moggok quest. I didn't even know I could pay for teleports - so I just ran the dumb quest: Misty/Rivervale for the Jum, Qeynos for the fish, Erudin for the tonic, bank for the kiola nut - then gate back to FP to get the book - then run to Oggok to get a stein.
Well, that was a long run - espeically aaaalllll the way across W Karana - until - I foung out about the "hole" or free TP. If you zoned into W Karana at the shore, entered the water, went under, and swam back the way you'd come - there was a "hole" - and you got a message that read something like "player under the world - moving to safe location." !!! And it moved you to Brother What's His Name's spot, the prayer bead guy - all the way across W Karana very near the zone to Q Hills! A free TP across the zone!
There was a way to TP across E Commons too when entering from the W Commons on the north rim.
Anyway, that was really cool til they fixed it, and you only teleported back to shore or back to where you'd zoned into the commons. Sigh.
The "holes" may still be there. Next time I'm in Karana I'll check - er - the Commons were redone - can't imagine that the old Commons hole is there (or where it could be).
It was common for Wizards and Druids to become "taxis" and port people around for money. If high lvls were late for a raid, they'd pay crazy money for ports - 50, even 100 plat! Wizards and Druids were more "afk" and/or "anon" than Clerics back then; these classes were constantly asked for teleports.
Did you know where "kiting" came from? In the first year or so of the game, Druids could either snare or root - but iirc not both (one overwrote the other). Also, DoTs did FULL damage if a mob was chasing the caster. I used to watch Druids DoT targets and run, literally like a kite trailing behind them on an unseen string! Thus, kiting - which sort of became an all purpose word for soloing.
But it was actually mobs chasing druids (or shamans or necros w/ jman boots or whatever). This was nerfed - one of the big, mean early bad nerfs - and what they did was to lessen the damage DoTs did if the target was pursuing (but not if it wasn't moving or running in fear). Well, Druids could charm animals, or root and be very hair trigger on the re-root - and then quadding was discovered (and then they decided to allow us to snare AND root at the same time, so root rotting became safe).
Now, it seems to me that DoTs do full damage even if the target is chasing you. The damage reported on my chat bar doesn't go down. Back in the old daze, dots iirc didn't report damage AND didn't tell you when they ended. Most people recast dots way, way too often. I'd sometimes try to count the seconds in my head. Sometimes you could see that hte target's health bar wasn't going down, so that meant recase the dots. Finally they changed this.
Why did druids back then "kite" often without snaring (before the nerf)? That's a good question. I typically saw druids kiting UNsnared targets - like Ogre bouncers in the Feerot. The druids just dotted several targets and ran around the edges of the zone. Maybe snaring used up mana and was unnecessary. Maybe the snares had worn off. Maybe the snares were resisted a lot. I dunno. I just know what I saw (I assume snares were perfectly okay to use) - but we all did have small mana pools compared to now. So who knows? I did see druids kiting snared victims, too - and kiting applied to either situation. Shamans kited unsnared victims, of course, cuz they have no snare (unless they worship inoruk and got hte clickie, but that didn't exist back then).
Gosh, any time I ran the Stein of Moggok quest, I hoped there was a raid on Oggok. Good chance you could pick up a free Crude Stein for some charisma. But they were lore, iirc, so you had to get rid of your stein - or park alts in or near oggok.
And to transfer stuff - did you know we didn't have shared bank accounts bakc then? People often went into an "unused building" and dropped items and/or money on the floor, where they'd parked the alt moments before. You logged in and hoped no one had seen you - or that there wasn't some crash - or you'd lose it.
Did you know you can't drop money any more because there was an exploit. It was reported that in the old player bazaar, people would trick others into putting money into a window at a campfire - but the fire graphic caused them to drop the money on the floor. The other guy would pick up the coin and then say "hey, you wanna buy it or not? I'm offering you a very low price!" The duped person would wonder why their 100 plat just vanished! I'm very glad I was never hit by this trick. Not sure if it was true, but lots of people said it was (maybe even verant/sony - my memory's fuzzy).
We could make things back then and sell em for a profit. Fish rolls! Bat wing and a fish. All sorts of crafted items could be made and sold to npc venders for a profit. I think most or all of these got shut down, people started botting them, or so the rumors had it. And there were lots of rumors. We had no ooc medding, so we sat around speculating and guessing a whole lot between fights.
EDIT - did you know there's a story to our term "nerfing?" Supposedly in some other game (an earlier MMO), an overpowered sword was accidentally put into the game. Then, they weakened it in a patch. Someone who had the killer swords said it was as if his mighty sword had been swapped for a "Nerf bat" - the child's foam toy - (this is why some people still say "the 'nerf bat' swingeth" or some such). I can't remember the game, though. Ultima Online?
Interesting? :D