The Legacy Problem

[zodium]

What is the Legacy Problem?
I was going to start out this post with some quotes from the wild. But it seems hardly necessary. Anyone reading these forums or Discord has seen that almost half the server states "wanna get legacy item" as a central motivation for their Green excitement. It's obvious. The historicity and practicalities have been discussed to death. Anyone who's done the math knows that those people will be first disappointed, then angry, then demotivated or toxic. This is the Legacy Problem in a nutshell.

Mechanics have been implemented. GM-Cops reportedly stand ready to patrol the legacy camps 24/7, rhythmically spinning their pixelated batons while they whistle a jolly cop tune. This response is reasonable and well considered enough.


Tedious Disclaimers You Won't Read Anyway
Let me preface a few things here. As a vanilla EQ player, I was big time down on Green due to what I saw as an unwillingness to address the one vanilla imbalance that could spoil the whole barrel: insufficient content. Spawn time reduction and List helped show me that unwillingness doesn't exist. No doubt long discussions have been had; positions have been taken; decisions have been made; time has been invested, and a fragile truce seems to exist around List. All the same, I want to make the case to you all, and especially to any staff reading this, that this state cannot last, and we should, in this 11th hour, take a radically different approach.

I am conscious the Green release date looms large, and that this is too long and you didn't read it. And as I know some of my esteemed poster comrades are very concerned with purity of intent (skip this if that's not you), allow me to sound like an insanely huge tool: I am wealthy beyond measure on Blue, and I will do well on Green too. If it's useful or even just mildly entertaining to me, I own it. If it can be killed, I've killed it, probably solo or with a minimally viable crew. If it can be done, I have done it. I like to think the people of P99 know Gatmanno as a force for the joie de vivre of adventuring. I am not mad, bad or sad in any sense of those words. And while I would like to engage with all my poster comrades about the legacy item problem here, if this doesn't insulate me from having my intentions impugned, nothing will. I am not out for anything except freeing people to enjoy the classic experience.


Maybe Shut Up And Get To The Point, Gat?
Every day hopeful greenhorns (that's what we're calling people who joined p99 for Green launch, that's forum canon now) pop in to tell everyone how excited they are to do this and that, and finally get their shot at a Manastone. And of course they do. As a Manastone owner on Blue, I can tell you yes, Manastones are every bit as fun as they look. Regardless of efficiency, it is a very fun mechanic with a very fun visual effect. You'd be crazy not to want one, of course, like a great musician who died too young, they became an iconic item!

I seriously applaud List. It is clever and well thought out, and it will likely be as effective as can be expected in managing camp drama given this situation. But the operative term is "as can be expected" here. And the underlying issue is underestimating how central Guises, Lockets, Rings of the Dead, etc., all these iconic classic items are in the minds of 'people who reminisce about Classic EverQuest and are drawn to be genuinely passionate about the P99 vision'. People can laugh derisively at them, or appeal to reason or purity of classicness, if it makes you feel better. It won't help. In many ways, the perceived possibility of obtaining legacy items is a core part of what defines classicness to many.

Because it isn't just those items-as-items. It's nearly twenty years of people low key, maybe not even with conscious awareness, thinking about that Manastone they never got in Classic, now and then, when they saw an EverQuest thing. You don't need advanced degrees in psychology to work out that if you emotionally dangle a person's childhood dreams, even stupid and trivial ones, just out of reach in front of them, they are going to pursue it with single minded toxicity. And they will culturally transmit that attitude to everyone who didn't play Classic.

List will thus have both foreseeable and unforeseeable consequences for gameplay at large that doesn't really address this problem, not least of which in people picking classes based on aptness for the new mechanic. And when I think about this, I think all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't keep Humpty from pursuing his deeply entrenched psychological desire for one or more legacy items. I think it's a very humbling, very human thing. As Green 1 becomes Green 2 and 3 and relevant strategies improve, this will only become more pronounced.


Too Long, Didn't Read
And that's it. When we get to the Green 2, Green 3, etc. part, what's when I think, hold right the heck on here. These items are only a problem precisely because they're so fun and iconic and representative of "classicness" that there is no classic without them. Why are we doing all this unclassic work to keep people from having them?

I feel like the community have slowly and very begrudgingly acknowledged the very real psychological importance of legacy items in defining 'classicness' for most people to begin with, and the importance of their equitable availability to a Classic EverQuest project. Then, slowly and begrudgingly talked ourselves into deploying a combination of a custom game mechanic plus heavy manual enforcement to deal with the toxicity we all know will ensue from their scarcity even when they do drop.

We do all this so that we can specifically keep the amount of certain legacy items era accurate? So, here's the punchline:

Announcing a dramatic increase in legacy item influx rates independent of cash or other items the mob has, and adding other minor tweaks like Lore tags, would be simpler, more effective and at least less aesthetically unclassic, with less side effects.

If you're still with me, thanks for reading. Sloths rule, Hail Satan, Hail Santa, Hail Bristlebane.