I was surprised to see this change to 2 minutes go live without the usual "fixed, pending update". The Caster's Realm evidence seemed pretty dodgy to me when I read the thread a few months back. Here I'll present some counter evidence to hopefully show 7 minutes was the correct max duration in era.
Dolalin's spdat archive, especially the Historical spreadsheet, is my main source for these screenshots. The
eqemu buff duration formula page is also helpful to find the correct calculation for a particular formula.
Here's the history of Pacify for the trilogy era. Only a Resist Adj change was made some time before Kunark. The duration and its formula weren't touched.
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Looking at the eqemu docs, Pacify is duration formula 8, which we see is "Lowest of (Level + 10) or Duration" in ticks. A zero in duration is ignored and only limits duration by the player's level. Therefore, Pacify should range from 49 ticks at lvl 39 to 70 ticks at lvl 60.
Calm, on the other hand, has Duration 30, limiting it to 3 minutes for anyone above lvl 19:
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Here are the other spells with the same duration/formula combo as Pacify for comparison:
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To refute the Caster's Realm duration from Zuranthium's earlier post, let's compare the max durations they have listed on some of the other spells using the same formula:
Feral Spirit: Instant
Savage Spirit: 15 minutes
Aegis of Ro: Instant
Cadeau of Flame: 6 minutes
Bedlam: 8 minutes
Cripple: 20 minutes
All of these are up to 7 minute buffs/debuffs in the spdats and on p99. I'd argue the Caster's Realm guys didn't know the calculation for this type of spell duration or posted some unverified community info. I admit there's a spdat blind spot from Aug '01 to Mar '02, where the
Lucy spell history picks up, but it really doesn't look like they touched the max duration until Jan '03.