Be careful what you wish for...

[Halladar]

you just might get it.

This is going to be a little long winded, so I hope someone bears with me long enough for me to communicate my points.

Look I started EQ in 2000. I played off and on for a few years, mostly off but the game had a magic pre-POP that I haven't experienced in any other game. As to why I was an intermittent player, the main reason is the time sink the game basically is. It would take a lot more time than I have here to explain the pleasure and the frustration I got from this game. If you are reading this, odds are you played in the beginning, and hopefully understand.

Okay, the game was magic. I think it was despite Verant (and Smedley and McQuaid). My belief is because the game was basically a torilmud with a gui, not the sheer talent of the Verant people. Some of those people did a good job (the art people did wonders considering the tech they had to work with then), but this game was successful despite them, not because of them.

I might add, that there was a court case in the early 2000's between sony and the Torilmud (or was it Dikumud) folks. The claim being that large portions of the database (and world definition I guess) was pirated from the MUD game. Anyway you never heard much of it after sony settled, and you don't see much when you google it, but I've formed my opinion.

Okay, let me state something that is a belief of mine:

Everquest shipped in 1999 without a melee combat system. Obviously mobs hit you, and you hit mobs but it was a very basic thing. I don't think they implemented whatever they had in mind, and it is something that has been bandaided in live over the course of 10 years, but has never been fixed.

In the world of EQ 1999 stats do nothing. (I don't know how it works with EQ Emu) but in the beginning they did squat. Stamina gave you hp's. Int/Wis gave you mana. Charisma gave you a little better price with the vendor and may have helped faction. Strength is important for toting stuff and wearing bronze armor, but it doesn't do squat in combat (max hit damage, and very minimal at that) except for rogues. Agility is important to keep above 75 and the sharp AC drop, other than that it does nothing. Dex helps you learn skills quicker (remember no crits in 1999), and well you are going to max them anyway with all the time you spend levelling.

AC. Geez there was a post in this forum with a link to the soft cap/class thing. That whole thing was ridiculously convoluted. Further evidence to me that Verant didn't know what it was doing when it made this combat system.

Okay, those are all opinions. But like many of you I was around in the old days. A lot of you guys will remember Romidar Trueblade and Ruatha and the parses they and others made trying to figure out the melee system. This system was flawed from the beginning.

Okay this server uses EQ Emu code. A second hand implementation (could very well be better than the code they use on live; that isn't the point though) of a system that was screwed up originally.

You are wondering where I am going to go with this, so I'll spell it out now:

The melee/caster issue imbalance issue has been in EQ since the beginning, and is going to be a big deal here.

Bigger in fact. In my "salad" days in EQ, server populations were usually anywhere from 1500-2000. For the old world. Now you have maybe 300 on this server if you are very lucky?

You've already had threads about caster pets vs. warriors. Already had threads about people rerolling casters. I havent' seen them yet, but I'm sure the solo/useless without a group thing will pop up. The sheer cumbersomeness of playing a melee without gate or bind.

With low population it gets much harder for melee. Looking for someone to give you a bind, heal you, port you around, invis you so you can get somewhere to xp to begin with.

Over the years these kinds of things were addressed in live by the PoK books, souldbinders, item inflation. I guess it kind of works now, especially since there are no true noobies in live anymore.

But you guys don't have these things.

An example of something. Usually pre-kunark most people on the server in the level 40 were trying for a lower guk or Sol B group. A few oddballs with established groups may have gone to Perma or Mistmoore. Even fewer may have done Kedge if they had a really reliable group.

Let's say you are a human warrior with bad vision. You are bound in freeport (although I guess you could have bound in Arena). Your party wipes or you are killed in Lower Guk without a cleric in the group. You then have to run naked through N. Ro, Oasis, S. Ro, Innothule, Upper Guk (maybe the froggies hate you, depends on your frog killing habits), and whatever in L. guk is between your zone in and where you died.

Is it any wonder anyone would play a caster? Or say the group is breaking up. You are deep in L. Guk and you can't gate out. What do you do then?

Look I could go on and on about this stuff. Most people have seen the arguments before.

But that doesn't mean the issue isn't still there. What is covered up in live because you can go to the bazaar and buy gear that level 50's that raided for a year couldn't dream of in original EQ, doesn't change the problem with what you are trying to do here.

Like most people I have some ideas about how things should have been, but they would require some fundamental changes to the system at a basic level. But I think you are going to have to address things now. I mean you can easily see the all caster guild with a couple twink tanks not need any warriors (or paladins or sk's). Usual drill some monks, rogues depending on how their damage plays out...

Anyway not trying to be a downer, but I'm not sure how successful this whole concept is going to be.

[Villide]

My guess is you might be misunderstanding the concept of the server at a base level.

[Dartagnan]

I have no idea where you are going with this post, but thought I would mention the fact that EQ designed this game in the most part for people to be dependent on each other.

If you are a warrior who fights in lguk without a cleric in your group, then you face the consequence of having a corpse run if your group is wiped out.

It means people are going to have to actually think before they seek out adventure because there are consequences if that adventure does not turn out the way they want it to be.

After the initial melee fix, it is better. It may not be perfect (mobs still seem to hit for a lot more than usual and rarely miss) but it is fine. Our devs are working and improving the server everyday. Just because a few people are whining on these boards does not mean we have a crisis here. My impression so far has been that the majority of the population on this server fully enjoy their experience.

And seriously, people should play the class that they like and stop whining about any short comings right now. Play to have fun. If your happiness is dependent on mechanical issues then I feel sorry for you.

[JohnPublic]

This concept is already successful. It's not about replicating the original EQ because it was a perfect game, it's about replicating it because it was a great game. Things aren't handed to you. Things are difficult. Things are more rewarding.

My friends and I have had a blast the past week running around the newbie zones and hitting the low level dungeons again. I can't count the number of times we've rediscovered something and said "Oh yeah! This game was so awesome!"

We are looking forward to reliving the great dungeons and challenges present in the game before the challenge was completely sucked out.

[Maldan]

Let's say you are a human warrior with bad vision. You are bound in freeport (although I guess you could have bound in Arena). Your party wipes or you are killed in Lower Guk without a cleric in the group. You then have to run naked through N. Ro, Oasis, S. Ro, Innothule, Upper Guk (maybe the froggies hate you, depends on your frog killing habits), and whatever in L. guk is between your zone in and where you died.

Is it any wonder anyone would play a caster?



Let's say you're any class with any sort of vision. No matter where you're bound (other than the room you died in which might result in a death loop for you), if your group wipes in LGuk you still have to face some, all, or maybe even more of these things (if you neglected to bind on the same continent :)).
The game world is filled with dangers and obstacles for every class.

p.s. /agree Villide

[Villert]

Vision doesn't even matter on Titanium client - every race basically starts with ultravision.

[Reiker]

Mippo?

[Penoy]

2 much text.....

[Villide]

I think JohnPublic makes a great point - the server is already a success. Arguably, it's been the most popular EQ emu server going (based on unique characters accessing the server).

If the challenges of original Everquest forced interaction and grouping, this server will do the same thing even moreso.

Point of fact - I've been playing a Paladin since the server came out of beta, and it's been a hell of a struggle just getting to level 11, since I mostly solo due to limited playtime. But the struggle has been a great deal of fun as well, as it's challenged my playing ability - I can't just mash keys in combat or run wherever the hell I want. And I know I can't just head down to the bottom of Blackburrow and expect to have someone come pull my corpse out. I've gathered and turned in so many gnoll fangs, I can't run through Qeynos anymore without looking for the corrupt Qeynos guards, making bank runs a bit scarier. My actions have a direct effect on my character's existence within Norrath - both good and bad.

So I know that if I do get stuck in a bad situation - I'd better have a pretty deep friends list to call on. And that's why, even though I can't group much, I try to help my fellow players as often as possible. I buff the newbies, I've given away about a half dozen decent weapons I couldn't equip but acquired questing, and I've helped on a few corpse runs. So when the time comes, I'll hopefully be able to get the help I need. My guess is that many other players are doing the same thing.

IMO that's how this server will survive over the long haul.

Is the game hard right now for a melee? Hell yes it is - for this Paladin anyways. But I'm having a great time figuring out how to stay alive and maybe gathering a little experience while I do. And that's more than I've gotten from any other EQ Emu server (or even Live over the last 5 years or so for that matter).

[Reiker]

That's why you start a caster and twink a melee.

[Kaleadar]

You then have to run naked through N. Ro, Oasis, S. Ro, Innothule, Upper Guk (maybe the froggies hate you, depends on your frog killing habits), and whatever in L. guk is between your zone in and where you died.

LOL and this has changed when? You have ALWAYS had to do this. Every once in a blue moon you could get your corpse dragged to a cleric EXPing and pay them 30plat for a rez to save you the run and EXP loss.

Also everquest has some on the largest time sinks to date. The whole point of the game was to have things take a lot of time to slow the player down.

Everquest is one of the most challenging MMO's. There is a reason that only 1 - 2 end game guilds existed per server, and everyone else was 2 expansions behind.

[Wonton]

Oh... My... God...

[Throttle]

The lawsuit didn't actually have anything to do with TorilMUD.

Back in 1991 or something, a group of people at Copenhagen University created DIKU. It was a MUD, a text-based game vaguely similar to any given MMORPG, and it was so popular that they released the source code in the form of a DIKU stock that anyone could download and build their own MUD around. It was nothing more than the foundation of a game, barely playable until re-designed, and it was free to use and modify in any way you liked provided that you did not make money from it.

TorilMUD (previously Sojourn, Sojourn II etc.) was a DIKU-based MUD, and Brad McQuaid played there. Toril was very popular at the time and had hundreds of players, so Brad got the idea to adapt the concept into a graphical game. The owners of Toril agreed to let him do this, and so he created Everquest. The similarities between Toril and EQ at the time were huge, from classes and races being almost identical to the gameplay being pretty much the same. The only real major difference is the actual game world as Toril is set in the Forgotten Realms setting which is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast. TorilMUD is still running to this date, however it is a shadow of its former glory in this generation of WoW and all that.

Since Brad McQuaid's source of inspiration was a DIKU-based MUD, EQ shared obvious similarities with various elements incorporated in most MUDs. However, while they were primarily just similarities that are now considered standard elements in all MMORPGS, a few things were identical, most importantly the stock emotes. Even though these were fairly inconsequential to gameplay, the fact that they were mostly copy-pasted from the DIKU stock caused some concern that more than just the text echoes from /smile and /yawn etc. had been appropriated from the DIKU code.

Since the DIKU source was freeware with the condition that you make no profits from whatever product you modify it into, it turned into a legal case (although I don't think it was the owners of DIKU who initiated it) which was eventually dropped as it turned out that nothing else had been used, and the stock emotes had been kept more for nostalgia's sake than to steal from the work of others. Since DIKU is 100% text-based, the source code would not even have been compatible with a graphical MMORPG to any relevant extent.

[Halladar]

That certainly sounds plausible.

But how do you know this? What is your source of information?

I already knew about the race and class structure similarities. Personally I never played Torilmud, so I can't vouch for the rest of it.

But it seems to me I remember reading during the court case that parts of the database were lifted directly into the game. Things like what NPC's said and including quests. I never read exactly what these were but my impression was it was things like "You've ruined your own lands, you won't ruin mine." or "Natural selection at work."

You may be right. Parts of that story sound pretty fishy though. The TorilMud folks just out of the kindness of their hearts let a large multinational corporation develop a game based on their work? Which incidentally was a branch of another groups work?

(Note: I just looked this up on wikipedia, so I hope this is accurate. According to the wiki I read Verant was spun off from Sony at the end of 1998, and before this was a branch of Sony. EQ was released March 16, 1999 so for most of the development was directly a Sony operation.)

I dunno about this. I'm working off memory a lot here as I followed what I saw in the press about the case, but didn't save the stories. I seem to remember it was settled out of court and the records sealed but I may be wrong.

Exactly how do you know what you say?

And as to the rest of the comments people have made, well it's an old argument. But it is still valid and it was never properly addressed in old EQ.

With a small server population you are going to see these issues moreso than original with it's huge server populations at the time.

Also one other thing, "Since DIKU is 100% text-based, the source code would not even have been compatible with a graphical MMORPG to any relevant extent."

I totally disagree with this statement. At least as regards this particular game. It pretty much is a text based mud with a gui and some very rudimentary collision detection.

[Halladar]

Just an addendum about the source code thing. I think you could use it to some extent with this game. I kind of doubt they put it directly in the game, but you'll never know unless you had a copy of the EQ engine to compare it to the original mud code.

Specifically what I am thinking of is the database of NPC's, quests, mobs, the sort of thing that define the world you have.

It really shouldn't be mysterious. Somewhere out there is a copy of the MUD McQuaid played and any number of others that may have been used. Or maybe someone here played the same MUD back in the day.

I dunno. But just reading through the database ought to answer a lot of questions.

Of course I didn't play it, and I don't have the database.

[stormlord]

you just might get it.

This is going to be a little long winded, so I hope someone bears with me long enough for me to communicate my points.

Look I started EQ in 2000. I played off and on for a few years, mostly off but the game had a magic pre-POP that I haven't experienced in any other game. As to why I was an intermittent player, the main reason is the time sink the game basically is. It would take a lot more time than I have here to explain the pleasure and the frustration I got from this game. If you are reading this, odds are you played in the beginning, and hopefully understand.

Okay, the game was magic. I think it was despite Verant (and Smedley and McQuaid). My belief is because the game was basically a torilmud with a gui, not the sheer talent of the Verant people. Some of those people did a good job (the art people did wonders considering the tech they had to work with then), but this game was successful despite them, not because of them.

I might add, that there was a court case in the early 2000's between sony and the Torilmud (or was it Dikumud) folks. The claim being that large portions of the database (and world definition I guess) was pirated from the MUD game. Anyway you never heard much of it after sony settled, and you don't see much when you google it, but I've formed my opinion.

Okay, let me state something that is a belief of mine:

Everquest shipped in 1999 without a melee combat system. Obviously mobs hit you, and you hit mobs but it was a very basic thing. I don't think they implemented whatever they had in mind, and it is something that has been bandaided in live over the course of 10 years, but has never been fixed.

In the world of EQ 1999 stats do nothing. (I don't know how it works with EQ Emu) but in the beginning they did squat. Stamina gave you hp's. Int/Wis gave you mana. Charisma gave you a little better price with the vendor and may have helped faction. Strength is important for toting stuff and wearing bronze armor, but it doesn't do squat in combat (max hit damage, and very minimal at that) except for rogues. Agility is important to keep above 75 and the sharp AC drop, other than that it does nothing. Dex helps you learn skills quicker (remember no crits in 1999), and well you are going to max them anyway with all the time you spend levelling.

AC. Geez there was a post in this forum with a link to the soft cap/class thing. That whole thing was ridiculously convoluted. Further evidence to me that Verant didn't know what it was doing when it made this combat system.

Okay, those are all opinions. But like many of you I was around in the old days. A lot of you guys will remember Romidar Trueblade and Ruatha and the parses they and others made trying to figure out the melee system. This system was flawed from the beginning.

Okay this server uses EQ Emu code. A second hand implementation (could very well be better than the code they use on live; that isn't the point though) of a system that was screwed up originally.

You are wondering where I am going to go with this, so I'll spell it out now:

The melee/caster issue imbalance issue has been in EQ since the beginning, and is going to be a big deal here.

Bigger in fact. In my "salad" days in EQ, server populations were usually anywhere from 1500-2000. For the old world. Now you have maybe 300 on this server if you are very lucky?

You've already had threads about caster pets vs. warriors. Already had threads about people rerolling casters. I havent' seen them yet, but I'm sure the solo/useless without a group thing will pop up. The sheer cumbersomeness of playing a melee without gate or bind.

With low population it gets much harder for melee. Looking for someone to give you a bind, heal you, port you around, invis you so you can get somewhere to xp to begin with.

Over the years these kinds of things were addressed in live by the PoK books, souldbinders, item inflation. I guess it kind of works now, especially since there are no true noobies in live anymore.

But you guys don't have these things.

An example of something. Usually pre-kunark most people on the server in the level 40 were trying for a lower guk or Sol B group. A few oddballs with established groups may have gone to Perma or Mistmoore. Even fewer may have done Kedge if they had a really reliable group.

Let's say you are a human warrior with bad vision. You are bound in freeport (although I guess you could have bound in Arena). Your party wipes or you are killed in Lower Guk without a cleric in the group. You then have to run naked through N. Ro, Oasis, S. Ro, Innothule, Upper Guk (maybe the froggies hate you, depends on your frog killing habits), and whatever in L. guk is between your zone in and where you died.

Is it any wonder anyone would play a caster? Or say the group is breaking up. You are deep in L. Guk and you can't gate out. What do you do then?

Look I could go on and on about this stuff. Most people have seen the arguments before.

But that doesn't mean the issue isn't still there. What is covered up in live because you can go to the bazaar and buy gear that level 50's that raided for a year couldn't dream of in original EQ, doesn't change the problem with what you are trying to do here.

Like most people I have some ideas about how things should have been, but they would require some fundamental changes to the system at a basic level. But I think you are going to have to address things now. I mean you can easily see the all caster guild with a couple twink tanks not need any warriors (or paladins or sk's). Usual drill some monks, rogues depending on how their damage plays out...

Anyway not trying to be a downer, but I'm not sure how successful this whole concept is going to be.

You know I kind of think you're right, but I'll leave it at that. We glorify the classic days because of how we depended on each other more, but we also do our best to overlook its flaws.

(Is it possible that a warrior bound in freeport that wants to hunt in guk could get faction with oggok so they could bind in feerot or something? Is there a workaround so they don't have to cross several zones?)

[stormlord]

This concept is already successful. It's not about replicating the original EQ because it was a perfect game, it's about replicating it because it was a great game. Things aren't handed to you. Things are difficult. Things are more rewarding.

My friends and I have had a blast the past week running around the newbie zones and hitting the low level dungeons again. I can't count the number of times we've rediscovered something and said "Oh yeah! This game was so awesome!"

We are looking forward to reliving the great dungeons and challenges present in the game before the challenge was completely sucked out.

Want to trade attitudes? I'd love to have yours!

[stormlord]

I think JohnPublic makes a great point - the server is already a success. Arguably, it's been the most popular EQ emu server going (based on unique characters accessing the server).

If the challenges of original Everquest forced interaction and grouping, this server will do the same thing even moreso.

Point of fact - I've been playing a Paladin since the server came out of beta, and it's been a hell of a struggle just getting to level 11, since I mostly solo due to limited playtime. But the struggle has been a great deal of fun as well, as it's challenged my playing ability - I can't just mash keys in combat or run wherever the hell I want. And I know I can't just head down to the bottom of Blackburrow and expect to have someone come pull my corpse out. I've gathered and turned in so many gnoll fangs, I can't run through Qeynos anymore without looking for the corrupt Qeynos guards, making bank runs a bit scarier. My actions have a direct effect on my character's existence within Norrath - both good and bad.

So I know that if I do get stuck in a bad situation - I'd better have a pretty deep friends list to call on. And that's why, even though I can't group much, I try to help my fellow players as often as possible. I buff the newbies, I've given away about a half dozen decent weapons I couldn't equip but acquired questing, and I've helped on a few corpse runs. So when the time comes, I'll hopefully be able to get the help I need. My guess is that many other players are doing the same thing.

IMO that's how this server will survive over the long haul.

Is the game hard right now for a melee? Hell yes it is - for this Paladin anyways. But I'm having a great time figuring out how to stay alive and maybe gathering a little experience while I do. And that's more than I've gotten from any other EQ Emu server (or even Live over the last 5 years or so for that matter).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCAjmuA1HDk

[Halladar]

"(Is it possible that a warrior bound in freeport that wants to hunt in guk could get faction with oggok so they could bind in feerot or something? Is there a workaround so they don't have to cross several zones?)"

I grouped with a wood elf ranger once that bound in grobb. Of course he could sneak and hide, and camo. He had some spot in there that was safe to spawn in. If anything happened he just memmed spells and sat till he was ready to go.

You might be able to get faction with some of the oggok guys. I think there was a quest with one of the merchants outside oggok that you could work.

Over and over and over again. If you killed dorf guards you might have gotten faction with one of the oggok factions as well, I can't remember.

Offhand I dont' think I've ever heard of anyone getting faction with grobb that couldn't stroll in there. Maybe because no one bothered really after it got easy to get around, and L. Guk wasn't the spot most of the 40+ crowd tried for after Kunark.

Remember the 'sneak' feature and quests made some things easier. And god knows everyone had lots of time to run these faction quests hundreds of times if you were picking up the items as you xp'ed or bought stacks of bone chips.

[stormlord]

"(Is it possible that a warrior bound in freeport that wants to hunt in guk could get faction with oggok so they could bind in feerot or something? Is there a workaround so they don't have to cross several zones?)"

I grouped with a wood elf ranger once that bound in grobb. Of course he could sneak and hide, and camo. He had some spot in there that was safe to spawn in. If anything happened he just memmed spells and sat till he was ready to go.

You might be able to get faction with some of the oggok guys. I think there was a quest with one of the merchants outside oggok that you could work.

Over and over and over again. If you killed dorf guards you might have gotten faction with one of the oggok factions as well, I can't remember.

Offhand I dont' think I've ever heard of anyone getting faction with grobb that couldn't stroll in there. Maybe because no one bothered really after it got easy to get around, and L. Guk wasn't the spot most of the 40+ crowd tried for after Kunark.

Remember the 'sneak' feature and quests made some things easier. And god knows everyone had lots of time to run these faction quests hundreds of times if you were picking up the items as you xp'ed or bought stacks of bone chips.

If enough people play in GUK, there's a chance one of em will be a caster that can port. If you bound outside in the swamps, and wanted to get to freeport you could get a port to commonlands. This is assuming that there're so many people in guk that getting a port isn't hard. Otherwise, you'd have to run. If someone was going to routinely go to guk, they'd probably get a bind outside. Here again, though, how are they going to bank??? How are they going to sell??? (that's, without running across several zones)

[Halladar]

"If enough people play in GUK, there's a chance one of em will be a caster that can port. If you bound outside in the swamps, and wanted to get to freeport you could get a port to commonlands. This is assuming that there're so many people in guk that getting a port isn't hard. Otherwise, you'd have to run. If someone was going to routinely go to guk, they'd probably get a bind outside. Here again, though, how are they going to bank??? How are they going to sell??? (that's, without running across several zones)
Today 12:32 AM"

Selling wasn't really the problem. Of course this was the day when you would periodically destroy your copper pieces. The merchant who was on top of the hand that sold the troll and ogre shaman dot spells would deal with anyone. Occasionally a moneylender druid would pop up too and change your gold into plat (for a fee of course). Ivandyr (think that was her name) the lady troll with her earring hand in quest may have been a merchant too, but I can't remember.

And remember just prior to kunark was a different game. Literally everything in Upper Guk and L. Guk was permacamped. You could be a level one and probably walk around L. Guk safely during peak play time.

If you had the plat finding a port wasn't a problem then.

And going back to something someone wrote earlier in this thread most dungeons had some relatively safe spot to bind unless there was a train. Though most people would pick a safe spot outside the dungeon somewhere.

Melees of course have to bind in a city. Though you can also bind in arena, and the gypsy camp in N. Karana. Maybe some other spots but I am not sure about the camp, that came later.

Banking was a problem. Though there is a bank in Runnyeye.

[stormlord]

"If enough people play in GUK, there's a chance one of em will be a caster that can port. If you bound outside in the swamps, and wanted to get to freeport you could get a port to commonlands. This is assuming that there're so many people in guk that getting a port isn't hard. Otherwise, you'd have to run. If someone was going to routinely go to guk, they'd probably get a bind outside. Here again, though, how are they going to bank??? How are they going to sell??? (that's, without running across several zones)
Today 12:32 AM"

Selling wasn't really the problem. Of course this was the day when you would periodically destroy your copper pieces. The merchant who was on top of the hand that sold the troll and ogre shaman dot spells would deal with anyone. Occasionally a moneylender druid would pop up too and change your gold into plat (for a fee of course). Ivandyr (think that was her name) the lady troll with her earring hand in quest may have been a merchant too, but I can't remember.

And remember just prior to kunark was a different game. Literally everything in Upper Guk and L. Guk was permacamped. You could be a level one and probably walk around L. Guk safely during peak play time.

If you had the plat finding a port wasn't a problem then.

And going back to something someone wrote earlier in this thread most dungeons had some relatively safe spot to bind unless there was a train. Though most people would pick a safe spot outside the dungeon somewhere.

Melees of course have to bind in a city. Though you can also bind in arena, and the gypsy camp in N. Karana. Maybe some other spots but I am not sure about the camp, that came later.

Banking was a problem. Though there is a bank in Runnyeye.

Why do melees have to bind in cities? As far as I know/remember, they can bind anywhere that a caster can bind, they just can't port or bind themselves. For example, I remember binding in great divide outside of thurgadin as a 30+ ranger in about 2002. I can't remember all the places I bound in 1999, but I do know that I was bound in qeynos hills and qeynos for a while. Qeynos hills isn't a city!

I'd be surprised if a melee couldn't bind very close to guk with the aid of a caster - that'd be news to me.

[robrosoft]

I am fairly certain melee were limited to certain areas they could bind. I know there were some areas outside of cities that did get marked as bindable for melee, but most of the time it was limited to city areas.

[Throttle]

That certainly sounds plausible.

But how do you know this? What is your source of information?

You could read about it back when it happened. Also, I grew up a mile from Copenhagen University where DIKU was conceived and I started playing DIKU MUDs at 12 or 13. I've worked with the codebase and been part of some of the first established MUDs.

I already knew about the race and class structure similarities. Personally I never played Torilmud, so I can't vouch for the rest of it.

But it seems to me I remember reading during the court case that parts of the database were lifted directly into the game. Things like what NPC's said and including quests. I never read exactly what these were but my impression was it was things like "You've ruined your own lands, you won't ruin mine." or "Natural selection at work."

I've seen the DIKU source code first hand and the only thing I ever noticed being identical to any aspect of EQ was the echoes for social commands like /chuckle and so on. A MUD codebase really is barely applicable to a graphical engine.

You may be right. Parts of that story sound pretty fishy though. The TorilMud folks just out of the kindness of their hearts let a large multinational corporation develop a game based on their work? Which incidentally was a branch of another groups work?

Well, as far as I've been told (I played Toril before and some time after EQ was developed) he basically asked if they would let him use the MUD as inspiration for a game he was creating. He didn't tell them that he wanted to almost copy their game for his genre-defining, multi-million production. Also, since Toril is based entirely on the Forgotten Realms setting, they may not have been legally allowed to claim ownership over it.

Exactly how do you know what you say?

You can read about it on the wikipedia and in various places, especially if you know some of the names from back then. I also remember the case, and there was plenty of discussion about it on any given DIKU-based MUD at the time.

Also one other thing, "Since DIKU is 100% text-based, the source code would not even have been compatible with a graphical MMORPG to any relevant extent."

I totally disagree with this statement. At least as regards this particular game. It pretty much is a text based mud with a gui and some very rudimentary collision detection.

Trust me, it isn't. A MUD is programmed to output information to a telnet client, and everything is coded to deal only in text. The concepts are strikingly similar, but the game mechanics are not even remotely so. Some things will necessarily be roughly the same, such as basic combat rolls and how the game interacts with character files, but this is true for pretty much any game that involves online play through a client and combat against NPCs. MUDs do not have actual movement, for example, and operate on a chessboard-style grid where certain commands basically just teleport you into the next "room" which is no more than a room description pulled from a text document and some rudimentary flags for such things as weather and north/east/south/west exits. Combat runs on an automated turn-based premise similar to D&D. DIKU and EQ really do not share many similarities below the surface.

[Throttle]

I am fairly certain melee were limited to certain areas they could bind. I know there were some areas outside of cities that did get marked as bindable for melee, but most of the time it was limited to city areas.

Melees were restricted to being bound in city zones. There were a select few locations where they could also bind, such as the South Ro gypsy camp, but they otherwise had to stick to cities. It worked that way for everybody, other players could bind you only in cities, but once you were able to cast Bind Affinity yourself you could bind pretty much anywhere. Melees could as well if they got that one ring that had a charge of Bind Affinity, but it was prohibitively rare and may or may not have been classic.

[stormlord]

Melees were restricted to being bound in city zones. There were a select few locations where they could also bind, such as the South Ro gypsy camp, but they otherwise had to stick to cities. It worked that way for everybody, other players could bind you only in cities, but once you were able to cast Bind Affinity yourself you could bind pretty much anywhere. Melees could as well if they got that one ring that had a charge of Bind Affinity, but it was prohibitively rare and may or may not have been classic.

I don't remember it working that way. I know you could bind in qeynos hills and great divide. I also bound in the gypsy camp in north karana, but I get this feeling that wasn't the only place you could bind.

Hmm, well just looked on net and a lot of resource sites are saying that if you cast bind on someone else you're limited to doing this in city zones and a few rare zones (like highpass). Funny that I could play so long, off and on for 10 years, and not notice this. I wonder if there're any zones or places where a melee could bind that noeone to this day knows about?

I think it's sad that EQ never developed its bind system and/or expanded on it. I think the luclin spires and pok books were uninspired and don't incite the same kind of self-confidence that player-run traveling does.

Did you know that on Firiona Vie all players were restricted to binding where melee's could bind:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-4216.html

Bind Affinity will be restricted for all characters to locations where melee characters can bind on other servers.

So sad, I say. Such a pity.