No expansion server
 

Would a server that stops right before kunark release get old fast?

Looking at the timeline, I really love how limited and differently balanced the original game was.

No fungi, no crazy twink weapons, few clickies, less haste availability.

It really makes the game feel rewarding when you get xyz item, that when kunark and velious come out - turn into vendor fodder.


Original classic best in slot would be interesting to work towards...

I've never played vanilla, I started at Kunark launch.

The only part that makes me feel like it'd get old is how much I hate the OG 45+ dungeons. LGuk, SolB and Perma are all just the absolute worst.

Other than that, it'd probably be okay.

It wouldn't get old for me but the game is certainly less time consuming to max out in classic world.

Classic is the game they intended to make and Kunark is what they had to make to give crack addicts more to do.

Making 90% of old world content obsolete is sad and hurts the real progression of the game because with kunark you can get weapons for like 100pp that are twice as good as OG end game weapons.

Class balance and basically everything is better in classic.

A way better progression would have been to fill in the old world with quests slowly overtime to make the world richer. There are a lot of incomplete quests and NPCs that don't quite do anything. These things could add content and progression beyond the original classic without hurting classic class balance and making so much content irrelevant.

Verant didn't do this because people are way less likely to pay for more quests than a new playable race that is OP for 2 classes and about 2x the physical real estate. They just got more bang for the development buck and weren't too worried about the long term consequences. I am sure they would have laughed at the idea of a buncha weirdos playing their 20 year old game right now talking about these decisions.

Those dungeons are masterpieces of old school DnD style dungeon mapping and full of good lore, art, and danger. The thing that might get old for most is how crowded and limited in content the old world ends up being for a thriving server pop.

You could definitely go another year of vanilla IMO though. Just farming those dungeons, the raid mobs, the planes, to get your guild geared out before Kunark. Would be fun really but I understand the three year approach is the simplest and most direct plan.

I agree. Original EQ was a cohesive experience. I too would play on a server like you describe if it stayed 100% faithful to the original game but just fixed some of the bugs and finished up the quests that were missing. Someone had a list once, iirc it was a good many that didn't make it in.

Things got silly starting with Kunark.

A P99 Black Server (classic only) would be nice. Original client.

You do have a full year of vanilla. seems like plenty of time to do what you need to do. Do you think it should be a revolving server, like green? How long before you reboot the server? And would people really be in the mood to reboot so soon? At least by start of green 2.0 people may be more interested in jumping back in (After 2+ years since the last vanilla experience)

The timeline towards the end of green seems a bit weird though.
We have:
12 months of vanilla
7 months of kunark
18 months of velious ??

I would think at the time of the last patch (the time green reaches blue patch) you should just merge it and reboot green. Then Green is in vanilla for a higher % of each cycle. Probably more people are playing green for Vanilla than they are for "fresh velious" right?

I agree that some of those old dungeons are masterpieces of design. I disagree about the art however. I've always felt like EQ's graphics weren't *quite* good enough to pull off what the developers wanted to do. Mistmoore Castle is exhibit A: It's obviously trying to be a dark spooky dracula-style castle, complete with the long narrow pathway crawling up the cliffside to the main gate....but the limited graphic quality and framerate concerns forcing a limited vista simply don't do the vision justice. On the other side of it, a few places like Najena are so horror-inspired in design that with more modern graphic quality they might well have earned the game an "M" rating due to the dismembered corpses and gore everywhere. I accept it in spite of its flaws because I don't need superb graphics to enjoy a game, but I'm not blind to that flaw either. Modernized graphics using the SAME** graphic style as the original would be a sight to behold.

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I like the old world's general design best of the three periods P99 covers. The main limitation with the old world is the relative lack of content. It's a fun game but it can't effectively support as many people as (especially) the Velious era can. Lower Guk is a great zone, but it's not a great time when there's 100 people in there. A timelocked pre-expansion server works best if there's a lower population or some sort of layering/etc in place to handle population overload.

Danth

**Therein lies the rub: It's exceedingly rare for anyone modernizing an older game to be able to resist the urge to....tinker with it.

I take issue with the class balance remark, but otherwise agree. Not that Kunark-Velious are masterpieces of class balance or anything, but Classic did melee pretty dirty.

Kunark has way too many 'Giant Open Areas packed with dozens of random level specific roamers' that screws up the leveling flow/crafted feel of the game, however.

I always dreamed of someone recreating EverQuest classic, but with update graphics. Imagine that! I know it's impossible, but imagine it..

Yeah, I have wondered what a modern engine with the same style would look like. A rendering would be enough to get excited, there are some on the wiki. Also consider part of the charm was the flaws and the original engine.

Edit: Link to the wiki page renderings

500 people playing is more than enough friends, single server experience.

https://i.imgur.com/qChDTxw.jpg