The classic I never knew

[utenan]

Been doing a little light reading lately.
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You know, just for fun.

And it turns out theres a lot about classic everquest that I was unaware of... Even though most of you are probably well read, I thought I'd share this very important knowledge about classic EQ that I've discovered. Are you ready to learn?

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How dare you all just look the other way and pretend like you didn't know about the level requirements needed to join a group! Shame on you

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The Thurgadin guards are way ahead of us on this one.

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Wow! Apparently you couldn't type, move, see, or interact with the game at all while you were meditating in classic - but at least you could hear....people around you? the devs must have been feeling very generous that day.

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I never knew how complicated auto attack was and I'm sure all the melee on the server have been in the dark as well.

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I don't know where the term pulling came from but it's not classic. Here's an example of the proper term being used: "You should lure mobs that are near your level; lest you end up at your regeneration point". If I have to petition one more person for using the term "pulling" I'm going to scream.
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[Jaleth]

Ah yes the old "book in front of your face" meditate. At least we got to play gems!

And I agree, "pulling" is so non-classic.

[Muggens]

Fun read - gonna make a Lure macro right away "Great news party, I've lured %t away from the rest of his troublesome gang and towards us instead!"

[Lisset]

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

Ah yes the old "book in front of your face" meditate. At least we got to play gems!

And I agree, "pulling" is so non-classic.

Pretty sure gems came after meddling while sitting.

[Itap]

A dual wield button? What the fack

[Secrets]

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

Pretty sure gems came after meddling while sitting.

Gems is 2002-era EQ. It was actually the result of a programmer who got fired for coding gems into the game because he got a writeup for playing Minesweeper (which was removed from all SOE PCs after) and needed his makeshift game fix on company time.

Remnants of the GemsGamWnd code on EQMac reference the petition UI; this was actually causing a crash when zoning on the EQMac client with GM status on. If you didn't have the petition files in the client, it'd try and reference them and crash in GemsGameWnd. The original programmer had left some code there to render the GemsGameWnd in the same function as the 'screenshot' they'd take of employees' client screens to make sure they weren't doing something they weren't on their shift.

After he got fired, they decided to just keep it in the client and add it as a regular feature for players because they thought it was amazing that someone would waste their time on something like this.

Other programming oddities from classic include the "Who's your daddy?" line in the EQ Client. This was eventually going to be expanded on to reset a network connection, and the sequence contained three strings:

"\r\nwho's your daddy?"
"\r\ndaddy?"
"\r\nI'm your daddy"

Once they were received in order, the network connection will reset and attempt to reconnect without kicking you to character select. Additionally, these strings are present in 2002-era eqmain.dll which contains leftover strings from the server implementation of this code.

[Secrets]

Oh, how can I forget my favorite story? There's a 2003-era .map file that was leaked onto the testeverquest patcher in 2002 and was left there until late 2011 (lp4 switch removed it)

.map files contain a list of functions and their addresses for a built executable. They're like debugging symbols without class information and help a programmer understand what function is being called at an address.

One of those said functions is this precious function:

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Later, SOE had another screw-up and leaked a 2008-era eqgame.exe and eqgame.map file - we later learned that this function was changed:

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I was pretty sad but it was probably done in the partial engine rewrite they did in 2007.

[bloodmuffin]

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

I don't know where the term pulling came from but it's not classic.

Having rolled a monk during classic release I'm pretty sure everyone knew what pulling was right off the bat and they were using different phrases like (lure, bringing, grabbing, ect) but none of that stuck. Pulling was just used by the majority, there were the few that would say something else but using the that funky sub window and 1 chat box I would frequently tell my group "pulling" instead of the other terms. You can find tons of people using the phrase pulling as far back as 1999-2000.

[Kafter]

I vaguely remember the /loot function in early classic as a function to allow someone to loot your corpse, instead of dragging. My father, who played at the time, got pissed off one day because a rogue looted his corpse and then camped down in Sol b.

They didn't keep that function in for very long if i remember correctly.

[Monty405]

Does any one have a .pdf of an classic in box manuals?

There was a thread on reddit of someone scanning the Kunark manual but he never posted it. I would very much like to read it again.