EQ Classic? Not really.

Well as I was actually grinding AAs a few months ago, I can give you more accurate estimates.

1 AA/hr is about standard. I was doing crazy 7 box AoEing of the caller caves and getting 16 minute AAs in a 5 man group with level 60 characters on eqmac. Doing 6 man PBAoE with everybody in group just pulling bandits, dregs, and mushrooms I was getting 1 AA/hr. Solo charming with KEI on and absolute shit for gear (no FT) I was getting 1/hr in tier 1 PoP zones on my druid. 1 AA/hr was certainly doable for melee groups in PoP if you had decent gear. The elemental planes, and the plane of fire specifically, were better exp; so raid guilds had a large advantage from gear and zone access though.

Now compare getting 50 or 100 AAs with leveling from 51-60 which took the most hardcore players a full month on p99. Certainly far more than 100 hours.

EQ just rewarded the better players far more-- bad players were advancing at a much slower rate. Modern MMOGs are so effortless that everybody levels at the same rate at the same locations with the same same gear with no punishment of failure. In EQ, if you were bad, you lost exp from deaths, your gear was worse, your friends probably sucked too, the best leveling spots were camped by the elite players, you probably didn't even know what a ZEM was, and you thought charm was useless. But finding ways to increase your exp gain over time was much of the challenge of the game. I spent hours just running around looking for great spots to grind and it felt very rewarding to locate one.

From the PoV of someone who didn't really like endgame raiding, I loved AA. It made every class feel more distinct (at the start....then it started overlapping a lot) and it gave me a lot of smaller goals to work towards that I liked. I felt like every day I would log on, group a bit, help buddies flag, get a new AA or two...It was perfect for me. Even if the power gains were incredibly diminishing at high levels, or just gave some weird stats and stuff no one cared about, I felt like my character was constantly getting a little bit +betterer, and it gave me a lot more incentive to log on at max level and do older content when friends needed to do flags/quests/etc. That was the key, that AA mobs still give exp long after they stop giving regular exp, and that gave me incentive to do stuff I would have otherwise felt was kind of a waste of time. Before AA I usually just hung around in nexus and bullshitted in chat.

I went back to EQ last year and felt the same way. It was fun grinding AAs, except that there was now a barrier to entry on a lot of group content too. Like you were better off using a tank merc until your paladin/shadowknight had 2kAA. I felt like the sweet spot for me was around 2-3kaa. At that point there wasn't much pressure for "must have these AAs to do anything", but it was fun grinding extra ranks. By that point I was getting like 16-30aa per hour, but aa costs also inflated a lot (fuck you, combat agility/stability.) Honestly AA is the reason I'll probably resub to EQ yet again in a year or two. It felt like a form of progress when you hit the max level that could be done in small bursts and see some definite gain over time. It's too bad that 1-3k are basically mandatory on some classes now though.

You could get 18 an hour in a group of 4 exploiting rampage scripted on a gamepad while mostly afk in Acrylia in the pool with 8 instant respawn fish. The fish were light blues too.

thought this was in beta did this die?

It's kind of taken a back burner for YL at current time I think, as it has a few times during it's development due to work.

I get flamed and insulted every time I call EQC vaporware, but they've still produced nothing after five years, and they don't look likely to do so in the near future. I can't believe people still think it'll happen.

It isn't Vaporware because a lot of us have actually PLAYED it. It is in beta (well, Alpha really), but it's progress is on hold for the rest of the year. Yeahlight, the lead developer, is having his RL company bought out by another corporation, so there's a lot of legal bullshit and auditing and other stuff that is taking priority over this hobby. Because at the end of the day, he's doing this as a hobby. He and Harakiri. Hara's been quiet since YL told the auditors about his forced break from development. It's an understandable absence. Give it time, and the game will go on as planned. I mean, the progress they made during the first month of user testing was incredible. We reported tons of minor bugs and they were fixed usually same day/next day. You just don't see that type of commitment in most games.

Xarpolis_sl said:

It isn't Vaporware because a lot of us have actually PLAYED it. It is in beta (well, Alpha really), but it's progress is on hold for the rest of the year. Yeahlight, the lead developer, is having his RL company bought out by another corporation, so there's a lot of legal bullshit and auditing and other stuff that is taking priority over this hobby. Because at the end of the day, he's doing this as a hobby. He and Harakiri. Hara's been quiet since YL told the auditors about his forced break from development. It's an understandable absence. Give it time, and the game will go on as planned. I mean, the progress they made during the first month of user testing was incredible. We reported tons of minor bugs and they were fixed usually same day/next day. You just don't see that type of commitment in most games.

Click to expand...

Is there any videos of this alpha? how many people are actually testing it?
I would like to lend my support for the team behind EQC but I was under the notion it was vaporware.

It was in Alpha for a good bit, no idea if those servers are still up. I can remember streams not more than a month and a half-two months ago. It was mostly just testing the base functions and ensuring everything worked correctly.

I wasn't in the Alpha, but I watched numerous streams. Everything seemed to be smooth as butter, and as someone else mentioned once a bug was reported you could sometimes see it fixed within the same stream.

That was the case for about two weeks and then everything ground to a halt. Nobody was posting, testing, responding, anything. The fact that there was briefly an Alpha server up doesn't make EQC not vaporware. After five years they've still produced basically nothing, and recent events specifically indicate that no further work will take place as the owner is "putting it on hold" for at least six months. It's a shame, but it's not exactly hard to tell that there will be no EQC server. It would be better to discuss the possibility of getting him to give up the framework code, which is supposedly fairly complete, and then letting others take over and do all the database work that hasn't been touched yet. That would be the way to get a server made, if there is a way at all.

Can't really help unless you somehow have a decent DB for all the spawns/drops

There's a primitive but functional database in the open-source PEQ (Project EQ) which most EQEmu servers use as a starting point. While it probably wouldn't be technically compatible with whatever code EQC has cobbled together, the data can be used. Then it's mainly just a matter of correcting inaccurate drop tables, mob paths, spawns and quests. Since EQMac went free to play and a patch was released to make it work on the PC, anyone has access to a legit rendition of the content, at least from the player's perspective. There's also P99 which is close to perfect Classic+Kunark content. Between that and general player knowledge, it'd be possible for a few diligent individuals to piece together a sufficiently accurate database. That's how P99 was made, and they didn't have the luxury of EQMac or another high-quality emu server from which to copy data. Building a database is just a lot of research and boring grunt work, it's not actually very difficult. The trick is getting it done without burning out a quarter of the way through.

Its not. That's the man reason shit doesn't work

axeman_sl said:

That was the case for about two weeks and then everything ground to a halt. Nobody was posting, testing, responding, anything.

Click to expand...

When the 2nd wave of Testers came in, the majority of bugs had been fixed already. They weren't posting because you can't really report when bugs don't happen, and everything appeared to be working as normal. People stopped logging in because there wasn't much point. You would hit level 60 and then... It's not like you could camp gear or anything. You simply played the game and that's it. Because of this, Yeahlight began working on a new zone to further testing. That zone was Plane of Fear for different aspects of the game, which would unveil new bugs for them to fix.

axeman_sl said:

The fact that there was briefly an Alpha server up doesn't make EQC not vaporware. After five years they've still produced basically nothing

Click to expand...

That's where you're wrong. They have produced a really incredible game from scratch. Everything (so far) seems to work, and work well. The mechanics are as close to perfect as I've ever seen. The problem now, lies with the Database. That will be a time consuming task. There are major issues with every current DB that's available. They're made by a program that skimmied Allakhazam or whatever to get drop rates. However, these aren't accurate for everything. Sure, it'll give you an idea of drop chance for items on named, but non named? You're screwed. Most items that drop in EQ are level based. Gems and Research items had a set drop rate across EVERY mob on various levels. Yet these servers only have them associated with specific mobs. Due to this, the realistic drop rates were very low, so they increased them. So now you can farm a specific mob and get LOTS of an item you're after, instead of it dropping normally from any mob of a given level range. The DB these servers use is 10-15% larger than the "real" DB on EQ due to it calling out individual mobs all the time and not just level range.

The only mobs that really should have an assigned drop table are named. The rest are broken down into categories. Level range (pretty easy, level 15-18 for example), Zone (Different zones have different generic drop items. They become an extra drop chance for the mobs in that zone and that zone only), Class (Pretty basic here, but different classes drop different weapons. For example, most casters don't drop swords or shields.) and finally Type (What type of monster is this? Undead? Humanoid? Guard?)

Those are pretty much all of the "blanket" types that have drops assigned. If you can narrow a DB down to include the blankets, and not just specific mobs, then you're in much better shape.

axeman_sl said:

recent events specifically indicate that no further work will take place as the owner is "putting it on hold" for at least six months.

Click to expand...

You seem to not realize that this is a hobby. He's doing it for fun. He owns a company and that is his full time job. Things in real life, such as your company being bought out by a much larger company, take precedence to your hobbies. There are a lot of things that need to be dealt with before an acquisition can be completed. It's a time consuming process and he should absolutely focus on that until it's done, THEN return to the project. You sound like a kid or an unemployed person that bitches when someone has to be at work because they can't help you any longer. Just wait it out, things will be complete.

axeman_sl said:

It's a shame, but it's not exactly hard to tell that there will be no EQC server. It would be better to discuss the possibility of getting him to give up the framework code, which is supposedly fairly complete, and then letting others take over and do all the database work that hasn't been touched yet. That would be the way to get a server made, if there is a way at all.

Click to expand...

It will be made. 2 servers will be made, actually. One of the devs will host the full "classic" server. The other will take all of their workings and make a Shards of Dalaya style server. Realistically, there's only so much you can do with a classic server. Max level, farm gear, kill everything. Sit on your ass because it will NEVER advance beyond the point you're at currently. The other server could get a good 10 years of play time depending on how he spaces out content. The server also includes the names of Luclin zones, so he could eventually incorporate those (assuming people have the zone files) and make future custom content using those.

That type of server would have a much better longevity. Especially because everything will be new and fresh. You have no idea how the zones are laid out, how to get from one place to another. It's all new. Shit, where did you get that sword, that's awesome?! It's a secret. Yeah... it would be the true classic EQ experience, but not the game itself.

Too bad they cant deliver.

Alkorin_sl said:

Oops, your thread is shawed, so you're shitting up other threads now?

You're doing a fine job of representing your community. Well done.

Click to expand...

Lol you mad, keep hating I dont see you doing anything for the gaming community other than shitting up threads telling other people they are shitting up threads.

You do understand 'my' community loves the server, Retrolled is another animal so I dont expect you to like it just the 1-2% of traffic that flows through the links.

Shit at least after 2 years of development we deliver, ask some of the major raiding guilds they are having a great time.

Alkorin_sl said:

I don't have time to do anything for any community at the moment. I'm sitting in the hospital with my 2 month old.

I offered to help you a while back and you weren't interested. You probably shouldn't point at other projects and criticize them for not delivering when you're doing such a bang-up job yourself. I haven't seen Yeahlight or any other EQClassic folks blow up like a powder keg when criticized here, so... yeah.

Click to expand...

You should help don't need to ask me just log into our open source forums and contribute away, might be doing a 'bang-up' job but shit, I'm doing it and ppl are playing, can't play on vapor. Wheres YL at I have the resources to host anything and a velious db that's about 95% that could be converted to cut down on dev time, problem is a lot of devs don't do open source and that's what we're all about.