Mages were HORRIBLE at launch

[skorge]

My first character ever, made on launch day of EQ, was a human mage. This was the only character I played until I got him to level 24. I leveled fairly quickly but not as fast as the high-elf mage in Fires of Heaven (on Veeshan server) did. He was a few levels higher than me.

This was back in era where GMs had to come to you in person and give you your surname once you reached level 20 and then shout it out to the world, so the whole server can know your surname.

Mages back then sucked.

I read it here by someone else but mage pets had no abilities back then. I can't remember this for sure but I want to say the Earth pet did have a few more hps, so most mages just used Earth pet back then.

The worst thing about mages is there was no way you could get a pet past level 20, as research was not in the game at the time and the vendor who sold pets at these levels, did not sell pet spells. It was a huge thing Verant screwed up on mages to the point where I stopped playing my mage at level 24. Trying to play with the level 20 pet was frustrating.

I proceeded to make a shaman and never looked back.

So, I ask this question, will P99 implement broken mages on launch? I really hope they do as I think this will be true to classic and potentially reduce the number of people planning to make mages to steamroll thru content. Mages during this time period SUCKED. I think P99 should hold true to this. I am not sure on the patch that fixed pets but it had to be at least 2-3 months after launch minimum.