Athynox's Guide to Everquest - October 1st, 1998
 

Thought this might interest some. A guide to EQ as it existed in Phase 2 beta. Pretty long.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16VT...ew?usp=sharing

Found here:

http://web.archive.org/web/200008171...iles/guide.zip

Nice. I skimmed through it, lots of interesting tidbits about what the devs apparently were planning way back then that often didn't make it into the game: heat/cold affecting character without proper clothing/protection, 1500 cap on server populations, channeling was going to be spell haste, rumors of stuff like "necromancers can turn into the lich miragul" that may have been hinting at the illusion of lich spells, the devs apparently thinking there wouldn't be "autonomous" characters with the "balance" they were creating... haha. Good stuff. Player housing, "renting" inns in the wilderness, lyncanthropy... hah.


You think the info about kunark and velious was just from interviews about future plans? That they had maps and names to all of that stuff in the beta for classic surprised me.

Also interesting to me was how many of his sources were print articles. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise since this was 22 years ago though.

god when he talks about the social aspects and roleplaying and how there's multiple guilds for diety/faction/race/playstyle it sounds so much better than the boring line waiting greed simulator that we have now, wish i could go back to that time and experience the real thing again

also 1500 player per server was classic, teal needed to go

You can’t undo knowledge. You can only deter them with hours and hours of being on a list with AFK checks every 15 min and an extremely low drop rate.

Some other things I noticed...

> ogres have very low intelligence, which reduces their resistance to certain types of spells. ...

> [monks] ... are very religious as well, and the gods are known to bless them, not by prayers
and spells, but by magically enhancing their attacks.

> no animal will ever attack him unless first attacked by the Druid. (Not even in EK?)

No "Beg" skill listed. I still maintain that was a "feature" that escaped and they never meant it to be in the game.

> Teamwork is facilitated by including the stats for all party members in the main interface,

I guess they mean health/mana, there, as opposed to things like STR/DEX, etc.

> Character alignment will be affected by one’s actions and will significantly influence the way the character is treated in the game. For example, a Paladin that performs an evil deed could lose some or all of his/her powers.

> Unlike most of the smaller variety, giant snakes are known to hunt and chase their opponents.

> Plague Dragon (?)

> Each magic class begins with one spell:
> Bard: Hymn of Restoration

If only.

> Although your character won’t die when you run out of food or drink, you will no longer regenerate stamina and hit points.

Sweet Jesus, give it a rest already.

There are like 25-30 camps in the whole game that a "greedy" player will ever go to, and hundreds of camps they will never visit. If you choose to not /list, not to just bounce between frenzy and freeti and dagnor and rathe nameds and whatever, not to exp in HHK, you'll almost never run into "greedy" players.

If you want the classic experience, you can have 98% of it on P99. You just have to ACTUALLY want it... not just moan on the forums that you wish you had it while visiting all the same camps that everyone else is unclassically focused on.


You don't have to "undo knowledge" in order to have most of the classic experience. Don't keep the wiki open 24/7. Don't go to all the same camps that the people who you claim are ruining your classic experience are going to while acting like you're not as much the problem as they are. Don't sit on the forums reading drivel and spewing out drivel of your own. Those things are the real detriments to the classic experience on p99, not a handful of different mechanics or "unclassic knowledge" or "people are just greedy minmax wow players these days."


I'm getting obnoxiously philosophical with this, but imo you find what you're looking for. It's true in life, and it's true on p99. If you're GENUINELY looking for the classic experience here, you'll find it.

not really that, its the mentality of today's player, the zoomer focus and focus only on personal wealth, where as before games were so much more about being social and just having a good time

sometimes i can be in a zone with 50 people and no one says a word for multiple hours, because people are focused on themselves only in 2020, or a group of 3 people taking up a camp wont invite more because "waaah my exp" or "waaah exp penalty"

This might be your best quote ever.

I will agree that I've run into this problem more than I thought I would. However, I wouldn't say that I frequently run into not full groups being unwilling to take more...it's still more of the exception than the rule but it's a bit more common than I thought it would be.

I do see it being pretty quiet sometimes, even in groups, but I wonder if we have a lot of new people on Green who never played EQ back in the day and so they're used to the whole social aspect of MMOs being non-existent. I do find that if you make an effort to be talkative though that people will generally respond.