How was ring war even possible in 2001?

[starkind]

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

This is actually the truth. The top guilds everyone remembers across all servers were barely able to clear expansions before the next expansion came out. Easily 99%+ of players never even raided the easiest stuff in an expansion by the time a new expansion was already coming out. Seeing a level 50 in classic was rare and confirmed someone had no life. Same for 60 in Kunark and ToV raiders in Velious let alone Sleeper.

P99 has a broken leveling curve for various reasons that causes everyone to level way too fast and stack up at max level with multiple alts before classic even ends. Charmed pets are abused in basically every group and raid scenario when in reality you can see the classic era posts from Enchanters wishing they hadn't played their class because it's broken as fuck and mob MR in planes was so high they weren't even trusted to mez mobs and instead just acted as buff bots.

I was there for the first 3 years. Can't speak for the rest of you.

Great post 👍

[Scalem]

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

This is actually the truth. The top guilds everyone remembers across all servers were barely able to clear expansions before the next expansion came out. Easily 99%+ of players never even raided the easiest stuff in an expansion by the time a new expansion was already coming out. Seeing a level 50 in classic was rare and confirmed someone had no life. Same for 60 in Kunark and ToV raiders in Velious let alone Sleeper.

P99 has a broken leveling curve for various reasons that causes everyone to level way too fast and stack up at max level with multiple alts before classic even ends. Charmed pets are abused in basically every group and raid scenario when in reality you can see the classic era posts from Enchanters wishing they hadn't played their class because it's broken as fuck and mob MR in planes was so high they weren't even trusted to mez mobs and instead just acted as buff bots.

You really can’t post without bringing up enchanters being “broken” can you? I look forward to your next essay on the topic that gets shit on and ignored and you continue to cry.

[xeffo]

Was raiding easier in era on Live? Yes, but not because P99 devs have intentionally made things harder across the board. It's almost entirely because P99 is run on 3rd party code (EQEMU) which has to be able to support EVERY EQ EXPANSION RELEASED. Why does that matter? I quit live in the middle of Luclin, but from what I've seen on other EQEMU (non-p99) servers that have more expansions enabled, it's pretty clear there was a revamp or rewrite of some of the base NPC behavior and resistance code.

After rewatching the linked videos (which I'm literally in), the main difference is that p99 does not handle spell resistance properly for the era. It was rare for dragon fear to last the full duration, even without 255 MR. You'll note how often it breaks early in Lowlo's videos. It was easier to resist dragon AEs - hence why Sontalak isn't instamelting our MT Grudgebringer who, yes, is sporting some crafted armor. Most noteworthy is probably how this affects charm on p99 - it broke a hell of a lot more often on Live, enough to make the feats p99 enchanters are capable of either not worthwhile or impossible. (caveat: p99 either removed or public knowledge never knew about the undercon Kael giant capable of allowing enchanters to solo KDT)

So it's mostly that they're trying to create an experience that is as accurate as possible but due to software changes (and having no alternative emulator software) they are stuck using something designed for later expansions. There's also many small inaccuracies of information, but those don't affect things as much as the fundamental code differences.

And uh, yes, uber guilds did clear expansions in era. You can't claim to have been following the 'top guilds' across servers and not know about FoH, AL, LoS, or even our little Povar's wannabe, Triton. They all had websites regularly being updated with their raid accomplishments, and things were definitely being killed in era, so stop talking out of your ass. Even in our case, Povar, my guild, Rising Ascension, was not anything resembling a hardcore raiding guild - we had maybe 2 dozen players you could consider 'dedicated' enough to compare to P99's current raid atmosphere - the rest were mixed casual "warmbodies" - and even we cleared Vulak and Tunare unassisted, in era, before Luclin.

EQ is not a difficult or complex game. The mechanics of it have been known and minmaxed for 20 years.

P99 is harder than Live because it's being run on imperfect emulator software with imperfect/inaccurate game database knowledge. That's it. They've done their best. Without access to legacy server/client code, it's not going to get much better.

[SantagarBrax]

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

velius wasn't playable until luclin

Completely incorrect.

[SantagarBrax]

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

This is actually the truth. The top guilds everyone remembers across all servers were barely able to clear expansions before the next expansion came out. Easily 99%+ of players never even raided the easiest stuff in an expansion by the time a new expansion was already coming out. Seeing a level 50 in classic was rare and confirmed someone had no life. Same for 60 in Kunark and ToV raiders in Velious let alone Sleeper.

P99 has a broken leveling curve for various reasons that causes everyone to level way too fast and stack up at max level with multiple alts before classic even ends. Charmed pets are abused in basically every group and raid scenario when in reality you can see the classic era posts from Enchanters wishing they hadn't played their class because it's broken as fuck and mob MR in planes was so high they weren't even trusted to mez mobs and instead just acted as buff bots.

While this may have been the case on your server, it most certainly wasn't on Xegony. The knowledge gap was the biggest factor contributing to this delay in raid encounters occurring during a later time line.

I was in a top 5 raiding guild during Luclin on Xegony. While we weren't doing VT's week in and week out, every single other raid content in Luclin was raided before PoP dropped. We went back and did a few select targets from previous expansions, such as Velious - Vulak / AoW's and in Luclin - Ssra Temple / The Deep mob / some VT.

All of this was done pre PoP dropping. Once PoP dropped we still went back for some of those targets. When Gates of Discord came out, the raid encounters were so broken that we could not complete them. It wasn't until later on during Omens of War that we could actually go back and complete raid encounters during GoD due to all the bugs, etc.

Dragons of Norrath was a fun expansion.

[SantagarBrax]

Havenlight and Inner Circle were the top 2 raiding guilds during classic - PoP on Xegony. During PoP, Havenlight disbanded and reformed into Noble Companions. Inner Circle disbanded midway through PoP and reformed into Remnants of Power.

Other mentionable raiding guilds on Xegony included: Immortal #3 or #4, Machin Shin, then all the lesser guilds like BAD, DOOM, etc.

[SantagarBrax]

Also, Archlich was Classic over Demi Lich for better mana regen. It wasn't reversed until past classic era.

[Izzo]

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

Other mentionable raiding guilds on Xegony included: Immortal #3 or #4, Machin Shin, then all the lesser guilds like BAD, DOOM, etc.

When I raided with Machin Shin my favorite thing to do was whip out Neb's Warbone on farm night. The bigger the target, the harder I laughed.

[Jimjam]

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

Completely incorrect.

Kinda true for me... I didn’t even buy SoV until LoY/LDON era cos an expansion worth of the everfrost area sounded BORING!

[HanzzYolo]

I agree. One "reason" raid mobs in particular could be overtuned - if it was as easy as having 20-30 people in shitty gear killing a raid mob, the raid scene would be total shit and way too easy.

With 20+ years of experience, raiders now are simply too good and must have an adequate challenge to keep the server interesting.

And i agree - that's ok.

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

If you watch video of actual in-era classic EQ (and there are a few) you'll see the secret to killing anything was to have a couple dozen of people in bad kunark quest gear stand around and auto attack the mob until it is dead. sontalak. zlandicar. you name it.

p99 mobs aren't classic and are very jacked and overtuned. but that's ok.