Green 2.0 advice

[AenorVZ]

Just read this entire thread hoping that there were 15 pages of additions to Videri's excellent breakdown. Instead it's 15 pages of suggestions for how to make a more custom/less classic server that would be better placed on TAKP's forums.

Here's my addition. I took about a month break approximately one month after release because there were no mage pets past either level 24 or 29 (I forget) in game. These pet spells were not available on a vendor and the ability to research these spells was not implemented until about two months into the server's life.

This implementation was a result of a pre-release thread by Dolly that I wish I could find. Dolly was able to demonstrate through documentation that the implementation of mage pets that was adopted for Green followed the actual timeline of 1999 vanilla release. As such, I supported these changes even though it negatively impacted me on a server where I decided pre-release to play a mage as a main for the first time.

Some additional thoughts. Everquest is the greatest game ever made, but it failed to reach its full commercial potential because of short-sighted design decisions that created massive bottlenecks. For example, on Green (where I'm a retired Seal Team member), at one point Seal Team had over 150 Sleeper's Tomb keys while the rest of the server combined had maybe 10.

As a result, it was within Seal Team's discretion to wake the Sleeper and deny warder loot to the rest of the server. There are four warders and if you kill all four they never spawn again on the server. If you only kill 3 and leave the fourth up, they will spawn indefinitely and you can continuously farm some of the best items in the game (e.g. Sceptre of Destruction, the single most valuable tradeable item in the game).

https://wiki.project1999.com/Sceptre_of_Destruction

I was glad that I got the opportunity to be in Seal Team because for the first time in 20+ years of playing, I got to be a part of the top guild on a server during the Velious era. I played on Vallon Zek from the day it launched in 1999. I ended up quitting during the Velious era in part because raids became so difficult that it required a massive zerg guild like Defiant to clear all of the content. I didn't want to be in a zerg and realized that the small family guilds that I preferred would never see end game content, so I left the game before Luclin was released.

Others have correctly pointed out the distinction between Everquest and WoW. I wouldn't still be playing the game 23 years later (not currently playing on P99) if it wasn't for the direct competition over content. When I played WoW beta and saw the implementation of instancing, I didn't make it past the first month of launch. Even though every server I've played on prior to Green I was on the losing end of those bottlenecks, it was the challenge of the competition between the haves and have nots that kept me coming back.

I agree that there needs to be a better implementation of the list system but I don't know what that would look like. I only encourage those of you posting here to stop trying to turn this into a custom server project. It's never going to happen so you're wasting keystrokes.

From what I've read, many of the content decisions that led to the extreme bottlenecks of EQ were driven by Brad's sense of competition with Fires of Heaven, the guild that defeated all of the content in Everquest beta. He kept trying to throw things at them that they couldn't overcome and was continuously disappointed in how easily FoH beat everything that was thrown at them.

I'm guessing this was part of the decision to make the penultimate content in the Velious era -- warder loot in Sleeper's Tomb -- subject to an unpredictable nerf that only became common knowledge once enough servers had killed all four warders and had the best loot in the game permanently and irrevocably removed. I think this was Brad's way of finally sticking it to FoH, which was undoubtedly one of the first guilds to clear Sleepers on live. You got there first, but you screwed yourself in doing so.

This is a really dumb way to design a game. If there's any truth to this version of events, it means decisions were made that affected the bulk of Everquest's player base that were driven by the actions of less than 1% of the population. This is why I think WoW was so successful. It created a reasonable expectation that an average player would eventually be able to see end game content.

Green has been a remarkably accurate representation of what vanilla eq release looked like. A single guild was able to exploit the existing, known bottlenecks to its exclusive advantage. If there's to be a Green 2.0 I hope that the dev team will consider that they don't need to do the same thing again. I don't know how they would change it without further customization but I think it's worth considering that an emu project doesn't have to continuously emulate the worst mistakes that the original game made, which kept it from reaching its full potential.

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

Green 2.0 advice for would-be raiders, nostalgia seekers, and the content-curious (a work in progress - feel free to add your input and maybe I'll turn this into a Wiki article or something)

Things to watch out for on future Project 1999 timeline servers. Warnings to the casual and hardcore alike. A crystal ball of what might be in our future on the next server.


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CLASSIC / VANILLA / PRE-KUNARK
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—Launch era—

Crowded newbie zones
Expect to camp the spawn point of a decaying skeleton while 99 other people rush around KSing each other.

Legacy camps: Manastone, Guise of the Deceiver, Rubicite Breastplate, Drelzna JBoots
There will be 10-20 players standing at these camps around the clock. Each character will have to wait 3-5 days to get their item. To accomplish this, groups of players will take turns on a single character. The list mechanic allows a 15-minute grace period in case of connection loss. This allows one player to camp out and another player to log in to the same character. Players will take shifts in this way to keep that character on the /list for long enough to get the item. If you cannot do this or are not willing to share account info, you may not be able to get these items. These camps were camped by 10-20 people 24/7 from the moment it was possible to camp them until the moment they were removed from the game.

My druid Naala spent 87 hours on the manastone list. Each night, one of my friends would play her for 6 hours so I could sleep. I would keep my laptop with me the other 18 hours of every day for 4 and a half days. That’s how you get a manastone. If you can’t do that, you won’t be able to camp a manastone. You can farm a lot of plat and buy one.

—Plane of Fear—

Planar rotations
Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Fear during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can.

Plane of Fear legacy items
Lustrous Russet armor, the legacy item Plane of Fear armor, will be farmed assiduously by those who know about it. It is the same as Indicolite armor (the later Plane of Hate warrior armor), but it is usable by all plate and chain classes. Expect clerics and shamans wearing Lustrous Russet Boots, rogues wearing Lustrous Russet Breastplate, bards wearing Lustrous Russet Bracer, and more.

Spinechiller Spiders drop the Cryosilk Robe, but only until Plane of Hate comes out. In later eras, this robe is trash, but it looks really good.

Fear Golems 1.0
Initially, Fright, Dread, and Terror don’t drop anything at all. They also don’t death touch or have any AEs. One of them blinds the tank (surprise!). They are just large golems with no loot table.

—Plane of Hate—

Fear and Hate were rotated between guilds in 8-hour blocks, with each guild owning 1-3 blocks. A guild would fully clear the Plane of Hate during each of their eight-hour blocks in order to fully utilize their slot and get as much loot as they can. The level cap is still 50, so it’s quite difficult. Expect to wipe sometimes.

—Plane of Sky—

The Ishva Mal for Summon Corpse
It was announced that Plane of Sky would be “competitive” for the first two weeks. As the release date of Plane of Sky approached, experienced players realized Summon Corpse might be necessary to quickly progress a whole guild through Plane of Sky (get some players keyed to the next island, have other players die on purpose and summon their corpses to the next island, and rez them).

As soon as The Ishva Mal was added to the game, <Seal Team> began permanently camping it, rotating in shifts and holding the camp indefinitely. They did not keep a camp list. Other players asked to camp the Ishva Mal after them, but they did not respond to /tells. They held the camp for many days. Other guilds were incensed.

Players petitioned them until finally the GMs implemented a /list mechanic for the Ishva Mal. Only necromancers could join the /list. Due to the 36-hour spawn time of the Ishva Mal, necromancers had to stay at the camp for hours or days at a time. Most necromancers did not bother.

“Competitive Sky” did not end up happening. The guilds quickly agreed on a weekly rotation. Also, it turned out nobody used Summon Corpse that much to advance in Plane of Sky. So the round-the-clock camping, the drama and rage, the petitioning, and the /list torture was all for nothing. the end

Plane of Sky while the level cap is 50 is a form of torture
During this era, when the level cap was 50, it took normal raid guilds 8-12 hours to clear Plane of Sky. Supposedly Seal Team would do Plane of Sky using almost exclusively mages, something like 20-30 mages, and that worked better when the level cap was 50.

--
Please post your own advice for players next server. Please reply with anything I missed or got wrong. I'll post my Kunark notes later.

[cd288]

I appreciate the thought and effort you put into that comment but tbh it’s a replay confusing comment. You say stop trying to make the server custom but then you say the staff needs to figure out a way to avoid bottlenecks being emulated etc….that would require customization

[AenorVZ]

A. All of P99's servers are custom servers. There were no rooted dragons in vanilla.

B. The post acknowledges the conundrum. I don't have the answer.

[starkind]

My advice for green two is enabling ffapvp all lvl ranges pvp skills hard-coded to lvl 60 stats 200 at all lvls in all zones. Disable exp loss. Allow ppl to ks train and bind camp. Make st nukes unresistable and do 70% dmg in pvp. Allow cleric nukes to land for full. Otherwise classic resists for root, slow, etc.

Randomize raid loot. Allow coin loot. Put in pvp vendors that give regen, clarity, port pots to various places all on a 10 second cast delay.

Only log in GMS to hunt boxers and hackers.

[MrSparkle001]

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

Others have correctly pointed out the distinction between Everquest and WoW. I wouldn't still be playing the game 23 years later (not currently playing on P99) if it wasn't for the direct competition over content. When I played WoW beta and saw the implementation of instancing, I didn't make it past the first month of launch. Even though every server I've played on prior to Green I was on the losing end of those bottlenecks, it was the challenge of the competition between the haves and have nots that kept me coming back.

I originally thought this too when I first played a game with instancing (was it WoW?), but then I realized it's superior. If you're a normal person with a job and a life you have limited play time and it will be in prime time if you're in the U.S. so the game is crowded, so you may never get a camp for an item. It's not even a competition at that point, it's just the simple fact that with your limited time you will find the good camps always taken. Want to camp the AC for those boots? Good luck. Maybe if you stay awake until 3 AM and someone gives up the camp.

Now every MMORPG has instancing. It lets you play at your pace and not have to poopsock or sacrifice your life.

I don't think DAOC had instancing, did it? It also didn't have much of a need to camp spawns in dungeons. It wasn't that kind of game. That's the game I left EQ for shortly after Luclin launch. EQ was fun but required way too much of a time commitment. If you weren't playing for hours every day and sacrificing your life on weekends to stay online you weren't getting the gear you wanted, and the game is all about getting gear. With DAOC it was a pleasant mix of much more casual and life-friendly PvE with fun PvP, neither of which required poopsocking and becoming a monitor-tanned shut-in.

Guess WoW was similar. I started in WOTLK and was already used to a more casual and life-friendly PvE, having left EQ's poopsocking far behind.

Not complaining that P99 emulates that. Not at all. The lower pop compared to live at the time and the simple fact that I only play games very casually now means that camping doesn't bother me. P99 is played for nostalgia and relaxation now and I actually can get camps here at the times I play.

[DMN]

I guess this is an opportune moment to once again bring up the suggestion I made when they unveiled the list mechanic before green launched:

Keep the list feature as it now is, but the legacy item will be randomly awarded to anyone at the camp/on the list. And dear no lifers, don't cry to me about it being random when the drop itself is random; we could theoretically go through the entire manastone drop period and not a single one of them actually drops.

It seems they compromised the classicality in order to combat people monopolizing these camps, yet all they have accomplished is empowering a different set of players to monopolize them on top of making it entirely impossible for a non-no-lifer to get the drops in situ.

[MrSparkle001]

Hmm what is the list mechanic? Is it a waiting list for the camp?

Because that really doesn't help much if you're not a monitor-tanned no-lifer. Ok it's finally my turn at 11 AM on a work day.

[Enloopious]

I've been waiting 23 years to get that Rubicite chest for my troll sk... I guess another 3-5 days is not too bad.

[Khaleesi]

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

I guess this is an opportune moment to once again bring up the suggestion I made when they unveiled the list mechanic before green launched:

Keep the list feature as it now is, but the legacy item will be randomly awarded to anyone at the camp/on the list. And dear no lifers, don't cry to me about it being random when the drop itself is random; we could theoretically go through the entire manastone drop period and not a single one of them actually drops.

It seems they compromised the classicality in order to combat people monopolizing these camps, yet all they have accomplished is empowering a different set of players to monopolize them on top of making it entirely impossible for a non-no-lifer to get the drops in situ.

We said this before it even came out, however since there was conveniently no actual proper BETA test for Green...well there was not much time to evidence how much of a bad idea it was

Originally Posted by MrSparkle001 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Hmm what is the list mechanic? Is it a waiting list for the camp?

Because that really doesn't help much if you're not a monitor-tanned no-lifer. Ok it's finally my turn at 11 AM on a work day.

See above quote
In summary, it's a move to empower carebears and also relieve administration actions from staff. In the end it achieved neither and was non classic as well


-=-=--=-=-=-
The only modified things I can think of that I'd even bother considering are :
The UI/target system that allowed tab targeting and multiple hotbars, with real time pet health showing
Otherwise, I'm pretty OK with #nochanges


As for actual custom, I'd be open to

• No waking of Kerafym
• Some instancing

- not sure they could achieve it though you arrange it like this :
The zone is instanced, the mechanics are classic. This means that you would still want all the same raid setups, preparations, COTHs, raid characters parked on ledges, etcetc; with someone facecamping for spawns as the mobs could appear any time - which would result in something akin to a batphone and mobilization effort as we do now.
[Note, GINA and similar would not be allowed ideally. Facecamping means facecamping, not afking a laptop somewhere in your house and then when GINA triggers you get an SMS message on your phone while you're at the movies, then it auto forwards a notice to your guild leader who then battexts everyone - like come on, make the effort]


What you'd have less of is the facepalm that is what we had with Blue/Green when raid bosses would appear and undue chaos would ensue as everyone tripped over each other.
[[Consider that the competition is enjoyable to some degree yet it becomes less enjoyable when it's as saturated as it is due to all the years of knowledge gained and there's a monopolization]]



Rebuttal I can see is that instancing ruins zones that have mixed content - meaning dungeon groups and raid bosses. I agree it's an interesting part of EverQuest in contrast to later MMORPGS
I did say 'some' zones would be instanced, though whether it was many or a select handful, on balance I'd accept instanced dungeons. It would just mean that while you don't get the pros you lose some of the cons such as not having people train you, or hop over your group or that you have to leave because it's over camped. Meanwhile for ones that did not get instanced, they could a few of them to a no staff intervention list, and do what was done with Veeshan's Peak.

Imagine having all of Sebilis to yourself, move from camp to camp as you like?
Or that now NTOV is a free for all!

It would significantly cut back on staff involvement as well ; less disputes raised, less disputes to manage.

Either way let's just be thankful these servers exist and hope that they will be around for another decade (and maybe even better, that the staff someday give out the source code and stand behind their commitment to provide fans an opportunity to continue enjoying it - instead of paying only lip service)

[Coridan]

The only real way to fix the /list problem is either

1 - Remove legacy items from the start.

2 - Completely re-itemize the game and bring back the classic bit of discovering what items exist, where they drop, etc.

Otherwise /list is the best solution for the current situation. Without it certain guilds will monopolize content and abuse the PnP policies just like they did with Summon Corpse.