I want our emulator to match the game from '99-'01 as closely as it can in 2024.

Look, there's always a tension here, between classic mechanics and classic environment, right? Generally speaking, the powers that be choose mechanics over environment ... but then sometimes the pendulum swings too far and comes back, and we get an unclassic mechanic that makes the server a better emulator overall.

Consider that countless "bugs" (ie. classic mechanics that were easily exploitable with player knowledge .... eg. early whirl till you hurl) were deliberately not reimplimimented on Green,
unclassicly. Dragons are rooted unclassically. Key mobs need /list unclassicly, and so on.

My point is, the best emulator isn't always the one that emulates mechanics the most accurately. Sometimes not doing the classic thing mechanically makes the game closer to what its trying to reproduce.

I submit that when virtually every Mage in the game is getting their epic in an unclassic way, that should be addressed, even at the cost of unclassic mechanics (eg. adding an unclassic spawn). So yes, I do think we should have to port up to Hate to check on mobs. That was the game in '99-'01, and no oneis even trying to deny it.

I don't see why everyone is so keen on preserving the absence of a few spawn points ... over getting to actually play Hate the way we all did back in '01. The latter seems vastly more important to me.

P.S. And this is not just a Mage issue. Obviously Mages are most impacted, but several other classes have epic bits in Hate too. Also, in Green 2.0 Hate will be prime raiding grounds, briefly, and people will be tracking Inny.

The whole game gets closer to what it was, for everyone ... or at least for raiders .. if the staff can find a way to eliminate Hate tracking. It may be classic mechanically, but its as unclassic as in-combat bind wounds.

tbh i think you all just forget what it was like or just didn't raid or try to get your epic in era on live.

Epics were hard, I was stuck for a year trying to get green scales in a family style raiding guild. It was my last step on live and here.

In this era on live people were camping these mobs like mage epic staff just as hard. If you hop on archive.org and go look at the old soe forums...it's a bit cringey how similar they are to these forums at current.

If you want most epics on this server, like on live, in this era, you have a few basic routes. This goes for all epics, it's just on a bit a spectrum, rogue epic 30k, a single part of mage epic..800k. This list is also from quickest to almost not likely to happen.

1. Join a raiding guild that do these mobs and put in the time to get the dkp to get your items. There are multiple options for this, look at the raid drafts for a solid idea.

2. You and your 2-3 buds go ham farming fungi tunics to buy quest items and MQ's.

3. Get together your current play group or guild do your best to do what you can and then reach out to guilds that raid to stuff to try collaborating to get access to things in raid zones. Then get back to seb bc plat still needed for the rest of the quest items.

4. Take your best team and turn them into a raiding guild and then spend 18-24 hours of everyday for the next 10 years building the infrastructure needed to be competitive against guilds that farm this stuff.

5. GM event in your wildest dream.

Everything you wrote is true about P99. Here's something else true about P99: its supposed to be about re-creating classic EQ.

In classic EQ there were no options 2 or 3. Skipping lots of Hate raids and paying a boxer to farm it for you was never an option back in 99-01.

If you buy an epic on a classic emu server, it should be from the guild or team that farmed it classically.

sorry man

back in like 2000 i had a friend who was this rich chinese kid and he was selling lvl 50 accts, items, and for a price would go out and grind, quest, camp or just play the game for you.

it was completely overt on ebay and such

i didn't really start eq to play a game, i started playing because he was making 1000s at age 15

turns out the game was great and i ended up hopelessly addicted and only ever made ~1000 off of it

Why is it not relevant? It seems like those stats are totally relevant. Your argument is that things aren't classic currently because people outside Castle are all paying Hate farmers for an MQ. The staff showed that's not the case currently. Just because it may have been the situation back when you did your epic is actually the irrelevant point...what's relevant is what things are like today.

Also, as an aside, seems a little bit disingenuous to say that things should be changed to prevent MQs after you admitted to not reporting hate farmers for what you suspected to be boxing because you wanted to get your epic.

???

I got my bard epic on live via an MQ, had the whole thing done except was missing one of the scales. Guild had just done trak when undead bard popped, a guildie had the scale I needed and we jetted back to DL (i think DL? it's been decades) to do an MQ so i could trigger trak.

though maybe this is just specific to mage epic?

MQs existed but they were not nearly as prevalent as they are today. But yeah it depended on the server and the player. I wouldn't say people were MQing in 99 or 2000 (at least not in my experience) but MQs were happening in 2001 for sure...but at the same time I wouldn't say it was commonplace

For context my last comment is slightly incorrect, you can find comments on Allakhazam from the classic era referring to MQs. I've found some on quest pages dating to pre-epic release (so pre- September 2000) so it looks like people were MQing in general (but again probably not as much as they are on P99).

One other thing to keep in mind with respect to epic MQing in the classic era specifically: Epics were released in mid-September 2000. It took multiple months for knowledge of how to complete the quests to filter out to the vast majority of the community. So really for epics you're looking at a bit less than all of 2001 as the only part of the classic era where epic MQs would likely have been occurring.