Be careful what you wish for...

[Halladar]

"If enough people play in GUK, there's a chance one of em will be a caster that can port. If you bound outside in the swamps, and wanted to get to freeport you could get a port to commonlands. This is assuming that there're so many people in guk that getting a port isn't hard. Otherwise, you'd have to run. If someone was going to routinely go to guk, they'd probably get a bind outside. Here again, though, how are they going to bank??? How are they going to sell??? (that's, without running across several zones)
Today 12:32 AM"

Selling wasn't really the problem. Of course this was the day when you would periodically destroy your copper pieces. The merchant who was on top of the hand that sold the troll and ogre shaman dot spells would deal with anyone. Occasionally a moneylender druid would pop up too and change your gold into plat (for a fee of course). Ivandyr (think that was her name) the lady troll with her earring hand in quest may have been a merchant too, but I can't remember.

And remember just prior to kunark was a different game. Literally everything in Upper Guk and L. Guk was permacamped. You could be a level one and probably walk around L. Guk safely during peak play time.

If you had the plat finding a port wasn't a problem then.

And going back to something someone wrote earlier in this thread most dungeons had some relatively safe spot to bind unless there was a train. Though most people would pick a safe spot outside the dungeon somewhere.

Melees of course have to bind in a city. Though you can also bind in arena, and the gypsy camp in N. Karana. Maybe some other spots but I am not sure about the camp, that came later.

Banking was a problem. Though there is a bank in Runnyeye.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Halladar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

"If enough people play in GUK, there's a chance one of em will be a caster that can port. If you bound outside in the swamps, and wanted to get to freeport you could get a port to commonlands. This is assuming that there're so many people in guk that getting a port isn't hard. Otherwise, you'd have to run. If someone was going to routinely go to guk, they'd probably get a bind outside. Here again, though, how are they going to bank??? How are they going to sell??? (that's, without running across several zones)
Today 12:32 AM"

Selling wasn't really the problem. Of course this was the day when you would periodically destroy your copper pieces. The merchant who was on top of the hand that sold the troll and ogre shaman dot spells would deal with anyone. Occasionally a moneylender druid would pop up too and change your gold into plat (for a fee of course). Ivandyr (think that was her name) the lady troll with her earring hand in quest may have been a merchant too, but I can't remember.

And remember just prior to kunark was a different game. Literally everything in Upper Guk and L. Guk was permacamped. You could be a level one and probably walk around L. Guk safely during peak play time.

If you had the plat finding a port wasn't a problem then.

And going back to something someone wrote earlier in this thread most dungeons had some relatively safe spot to bind unless there was a train. Though most people would pick a safe spot outside the dungeon somewhere.

Melees of course have to bind in a city. Though you can also bind in arena, and the gypsy camp in N. Karana. Maybe some other spots but I am not sure about the camp, that came later.

Banking was a problem. Though there is a bank in Runnyeye.

Why do melees have to bind in cities? As far as I know/remember, they can bind anywhere that a caster can bind, they just can't port or bind themselves. For example, I remember binding in great divide outside of thurgadin as a 30+ ranger in about 2002. I can't remember all the places I bound in 1999, but I do know that I was bound in qeynos hills and qeynos for a while. Qeynos hills isn't a city!

I'd be surprised if a melee couldn't bind very close to guk with the aid of a caster - that'd be news to me.

[robrosoft]

I am fairly certain melee were limited to certain areas they could bind. I know there were some areas outside of cities that did get marked as bindable for melee, but most of the time it was limited to city areas.

[Throttle]

Originally Posted by Halladar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

That certainly sounds plausible.

But how do you know this? What is your source of information?

You could read about it back when it happened. Also, I grew up a mile from Copenhagen University where DIKU was conceived and I started playing DIKU MUDs at 12 or 13. I've worked with the codebase and been part of some of the first established MUDs.

I already knew about the race and class structure similarities. Personally I never played Torilmud, so I can't vouch for the rest of it.

But it seems to me I remember reading during the court case that parts of the database were lifted directly into the game. Things like what NPC's said and including quests. I never read exactly what these were but my impression was it was things like "You've ruined your own lands, you won't ruin mine." or "Natural selection at work."

I've seen the DIKU source code first hand and the only thing I ever noticed being identical to any aspect of EQ was the echoes for social commands like /chuckle and so on. A MUD codebase really is barely applicable to a graphical engine.

You may be right. Parts of that story sound pretty fishy though. The TorilMud folks just out of the kindness of their hearts let a large multinational corporation develop a game based on their work? Which incidentally was a branch of another groups work?

Well, as far as I've been told (I played Toril before and some time after EQ was developed) he basically asked if they would let him use the MUD as inspiration for a game he was creating. He didn't tell them that he wanted to almost copy their game for his genre-defining, multi-million production. Also, since Toril is based entirely on the Forgotten Realms setting, they may not have been legally allowed to claim ownership over it.

Exactly how do you know what you say?

You can read about it on the wikipedia and in various places, especially if you know some of the names from back then. I also remember the case, and there was plenty of discussion about it on any given DIKU-based MUD at the time.

Also one other thing, "Since DIKU is 100% text-based, the source code would not even have been compatible with a graphical MMORPG to any relevant extent."

I totally disagree with this statement. At least as regards this particular game. It pretty much is a text based mud with a gui and some very rudimentary collision detection.

Trust me, it isn't. A MUD is programmed to output information to a telnet client, and everything is coded to deal only in text. The concepts are strikingly similar, but the game mechanics are not even remotely so. Some things will necessarily be roughly the same, such as basic combat rolls and how the game interacts with character files, but this is true for pretty much any game that involves online play through a client and combat against NPCs. MUDs do not have actual movement, for example, and operate on a chessboard-style grid where certain commands basically just teleport you into the next "room" which is no more than a room description pulled from a text document and some rudimentary flags for such things as weather and north/east/south/west exits. Combat runs on an automated turn-based premise similar to D&D. DIKU and EQ really do not share many similarities below the surface.

[Throttle]

Originally Posted by robrosoft [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am fairly certain melee were limited to certain areas they could bind. I know there were some areas outside of cities that did get marked as bindable for melee, but most of the time it was limited to city areas.

Melees were restricted to being bound in city zones. There were a select few locations where they could also bind, such as the South Ro gypsy camp, but they otherwise had to stick to cities. It worked that way for everybody, other players could bind you only in cities, but once you were able to cast Bind Affinity yourself you could bind pretty much anywhere. Melees could as well if they got that one ring that had a charge of Bind Affinity, but it was prohibitively rare and may or may not have been classic.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Throttle [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Melees were restricted to being bound in city zones. There were a select few locations where they could also bind, such as the South Ro gypsy camp, but they otherwise had to stick to cities. It worked that way for everybody, other players could bind you only in cities, but once you were able to cast Bind Affinity yourself you could bind pretty much anywhere. Melees could as well if they got that one ring that had a charge of Bind Affinity, but it was prohibitively rare and may or may not have been classic.

I don't remember it working that way. I know you could bind in qeynos hills and great divide. I also bound in the gypsy camp in north karana, but I get this feeling that wasn't the only place you could bind.

Hmm, well just looked on net and a lot of resource sites are saying that if you cast bind on someone else you're limited to doing this in city zones and a few rare zones (like highpass). Funny that I could play so long, off and on for 10 years, and not notice this. I wonder if there're any zones or places where a melee could bind that noeone to this day knows about?

I think it's sad that EQ never developed its bind system and/or expanded on it. I think the luclin spires and pok books were uninspired and don't incite the same kind of self-confidence that player-run traveling does.

Did you know that on Firiona Vie all players were restricted to binding where melee's could bind:
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/arch...hp/t-4216.html

Bind Affinity will be restricted for all characters to locations where melee characters can bind on other servers.

So sad, I say. Such a pity.