EQ Classic? Not really.

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
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It isn't vaporwear. We are absolutely 100% playing the game. We've found pretty much every bug or error that's currently available. The server has NEVER crashed, and random bug updates were taking upwards of 10 minutes to put onto the server. Things were going great. They were about to release raid content in the form of a "new" beta test setting Plane of Fear, but Yeahlight's company was bought out. Real Life ABSOLUTELY takes priority over a hobby. I fully understand that. This set back does not take away from any of the work previously done on the project. It's still awesome.
 

TomServo

<Bronze Donator>
6,418
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Well a buyout usually means $$$ for him to chillax and work in eqclassic when he gets back.
 

Rhuobhe

N00b
242
1
is this thing about yealights company for real or troll skills (200)?

I briefly skimmed the eqc forums the other day and couldn't find jack shit about it.
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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The game we're looking forward to the most came out 14 years ago and we've played several emulators for it since. GJ industry.
 

axeman_sl

shitlord
592
0
The game we're looking forward to the most came out 14 years ago and we've played several emulators for it since. GJ industry.
It's especially odd how developers will never provide a proper classic experience, even when it's clear that there's a demand and when the live game has gone into decline. UO, Everquest, DAoC, WoW, and probably several other MMORPGs have sizeable communities that want to play an older version of the game. If Sony put up a classic EQ server that required a gold account or however the hell their new subscription system works, I'm pretty confident that they would gain thousands of subscribers. If WoW put up a few vanilla, TBC and WotLK servers, there's no doubt that tens of thousands of players would come back. There would never again be such a thing as "the new expansion ruined the game."

The only ones that have really tried anything remotely like it are EQ and DAoC, and neither were what people really wanted -- progression servers were cool and all but had nothing really to do with classic EQ, and DAoC released some servers with later expansions disabled and they literally became more popular than the main servers, but they still weren't quite classic as they had new mechanics and shit much like EQ's progression servers. MMORPG developers have always refused to even consider making older versions of their product available, even when the game officially died long ago and nobody can possibly claim that it's because they're worried about compromising their live servers in some way.

The thriving emulator communities are evidence that there's a strong demand, and nobody has eventriedto see if an official classic server would work out. DAoC, the ones who came sort of close to doing it, proved that it was immensely popular even when half-arsed; yet no developer has ever been willing to so much as acknowledge the demand. I think there's a pretty good chance that an official classic EQ server would bring back more players than EQ currently has, and while they may need to do a little bit of reverse-engineering to get the old mechanics, it should be fairly easy for Sony to quickly make a sufficiently classic server if amateur hobbyists can do it with something as shitty as the EQEmu project and the PEQ database.
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
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Yeahlight reached out to Smedley about Sony hosting the EQClassic servers. They could charge people a subscription to use it and YL would make no money at all in the process. All he asked, in return, were the official drop tables and random spawn chances from the EQ Mac server.

Smedley said no thank you. He's probably banking that EQNext will be the big saving grace that the EQ community really wants. If this turns out to be a flop, then there could be room for EQ Classic in Sony's future.
 

yraapt_sl

shitlord
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0
SOE hosting eqclassic won't happen. It would be a liability. They would need to thoroughly analyze it and make sure there was nothing malicious. It is a risk SOE won't take. They've had enough problems with the PSN debacle.
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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Well axeman, what happens when the vanilla WoW and classic EQ servers have log in queues and they have to make 2 or 3 more? Seems like that'd be an admission to them that their expansion wasn't an improvement? Fuck it, there's money on the table.. they should take it.
 

tyen

EQ in a browser wait time: ____
<Banned>
4,638
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Yeaghlight even considering he would get through to SOE is laughable.

EQClassic is the only emu I play anyway, p99/r99 is corrupt and they are jews with the source. They should let other people release servers.
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
14,182
15,668
None right this moment. YL has allowed people to build their own "custom" zones for the purpose of testing, but nothing has actually been implemented onto the server yet. Hopefully soon.