It's no joke our intent is to go into Early Access January 2026. I'm sensing some concerns.

jan 2026 is completely realistic

some trolling seems to have leaked from other threads into this one

Asteroid will only be 3 years away at that point !

No rush. No pressure.

Can't wait! I hope it lands right on me, I'm not built for post apocalyptic survival.

I'm the same way. I want to be playing M&M though when it hits.

The June 1st tress test is almost here. Still can't wait to explore.

honorary bump this should rly be pinned tho :D

I played the stress test yesterday.

Differences from P99

My monk had FD at level 1. I hear that Clerics will be able to rez from like level 8 or 9.

There was also an interesting change whereby the vendors will not indiscriminately buy whatever it is you are trying to sell to them (and the ones that do give you worse prices?). So if you want to sell your cracked staff or whatever you have to find the guy who wants to buy it.

They did not have sense heading or /loc in the game. Not sure if either will make it to the final game (perhaps someone who knows more than I do can chime in?) I think some people have said there will be a compass which sounds good. I would feel lost without Loc but at the same time, it is not very immersive to have a game spit out some coordinates at you. And I would probably adapt to it.

Are these changes a a good thing? Maybe!? The best thing a dev can do is make what they believe to be a great game without listening (too much) to the little people. We are mainly imbeciles who don't know what we want. You can't create something good by committee.

It's difficult to know if the departures from EQ that were in the stress test yesterday will pan out or not, and it's also probably incorrect to judge them in a vacuum. We have to remember that there is a whole game being made and balanced, and there is a lot that I (and others) are not privy to.

The challenge here is to create a spiritual successor to EQ and the only way to do this is to consider the things that Blizzard got very right and very wrong with vanilla Wow, replicate what they got right, and try not to repeat the mistakes they made. Wow improved a few things about EQ, but also completely ruined many other things by watering the experience down. They added Blizzard polish to the game so that the combat/ raiding was a lot smoother and was more interesting, but they removed things like exp penalty on death, naked corpse runs, added a minimap, introduced fast travel into the world. The reason EQ feels so good is because the scale of the world is massive.

It's also a good thing that the game is grueling because when you finally complete something it feels like it was worthwhile, as though you have achieved something. There is a half-amiable half-selfish solidarity in the EQ experience. People know what a ballache it is to die three times in a row four zones over, so they will help you. As Yogi Berra said "Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours."

The social aspect of EQ is unparalleled. If you look at what they did with Wow, the levelling is absolutely atrocious because they made it so that you can pretty much solo the game. And the quest system is terrible. It's too much spoon-feeding and handholding. Hemet Nesingwary wants you to collect 10 bear asses. This isn't good game design. Oh you've finished all the quests in Goldshire? Please deliver this barrel of milk to some dude in Westfall so he can tell you to do more mundane gathering quests there, brave adventurer!

As a priest who wanted to play a healer, I spent the first 60 levels playing in shadow spec and wanding things down to kill them on my own.

Compare the levelling experience to EQ where after you hit level 5 or whatever you go to Faydark and start killing Orcs, fighting your way to Crushbone in a group, where you actually play your class. And it's social too.

And because Crushbone is not instanced, you have glorious things like trains and you share the space with other players who may be higher level than you. It's great that you do not run the whole dungeon in one sitting. It's really good that you can sometimes catch a glimpse of Ambassador DVinn or the Emperor himself in the throne room while outside. It's very exciting.

M&M felt like P99 with improvements, even though it was incredibly laggy. Doing big damage during combat felt good/ satisfying. There was an evil looking glowing green wizard tower over off in the distance. So far everything I've seen bodes well.

https://i.gyazo.com/bf5305075399251c...b452966565.jpg

This is an image someone else posted on the Discord because I was too stupid to take my own screenshot.

I think these devs are trying to create something that most of us who reminisce over MMORPGs from 25 years ago and play p99 will consider authentic and fun to play. I am very grateful for them and will definitely be playing this game when it does eventually come out.

Thanks to those who were able to pop on for the stress test. There was lag but we collected a lot of data from it. Hopefully some fun was had!

Also, TheIrateTurk, cool write up! I passed it along to the team.

Thanks Zukan

I have interacted with various devs on the discord over the past day or so, so they are probably sick of me and my "insights". I will do a George Costanza and leave on a high note.