Everquest TLP - Aradune and Rizlona Servers (Now with real customer service)

yerm said:

Great idea, take original zones and lore and add new mechanics and challenges. Maybe rename it from scars of velious to torment of velious.

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You know how at the end of The Legend of Zelda there's the second quest where all the dungeons and secrets are moved around and everything's harder?

More like that.

Ambiturner said:

That goes against their strict no effort policy

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Ya sadly. Although those changes would require pretty minimal work/effort.

Tuco said:

So many things they could do. They won't. Because if they were the kind of devs that would they wouldn't work at DPG.

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No good and experienced developers will work for a dying company for low pay thats for sure.

They put MoTM and MotOW on old raid bosses so it's not like they've never done anything. It's just that it's halfass.

Arbitrary said:

You know how at the end of The Legend of Zelda there's the second quest where all the dungeons and secrets are moved around and everything's harder?

More like that.

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EQ honestly needs a per-xpac randomizer. Would be hella fun. Move NPCs, loot, quest rewards, etc every week or something.

Secrets said:

EQ honestly needs a per-xpac randomizer. Would be hella fun. Move NPCs, loot, quest rewards, etc every week or something.

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Nah, that's a boring ass way to change the game. Adding new mechanics is much better. Relearning where shit is, is just tedious and boring. Learning to strategize vs new mechanics and obstacles is exciting and refreshing.

The whole reason boxing is an issue is because the game is mind numbingly simple. Classes, especially melee, need to be given new abilities and things to do. A good example is what Shards of Dalaya did with monks by making is so that using styles in different orders you produced different effects like debuffs etc. If classes were more complex and engaging, boxing wouldn't be so easy. Mobs can be given anti caster mechanics where you need to position behind them or they'll reflect/absorb your spells so that casters can't always just stand still and brainlessly hit the same buttons over and over again. There's lots of relatively simple things that can be done to make the game far better.

So I'm now leaning towards just playing an enchanter for this, I played an enchanter during classic and kunark but I never done any of the crazy that I've seen in videos, I dont think many people actually realised the potential of the class back then. The most I ever done was keep like 10+ things mezzed on the walls of hate during a shitty pull, which made you feel like a god.

I take it they are pretty much guaranteed to get groups? Either that or I guess cleric is the natural easy second character?

Maul said:

I take it they are pretty much guaranteed to get groups? Either that or I guess cleric is the natural easy second character?

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Assuming they don't make any significant changes you're gunna have a good time with an Enc.

Going to roll a cleric on Aradune. I'm not a huge fan of boxing, but I also remember how annoying it was trying to do anything by myself as a cleric, and that will sometimes be required. I know ENC/CLR is disgustingly overpowered, but if I roll with that I'd pretty much be playing the enchanter as main, and boxing the cleric, and that's not what I have in mind.

Any other class that would be a good support for a cleric? Mostly just to camp some stuff occasionally, not really planning on boxing all the time. Maybe a necro? Necro can solo by itself, so that would work. Could really own the shit out of undead with the cleric. Team Good/Evil?

I think you've highlighted the problem. Anything that will work well with a cleric will require more attention and therefore reduce the cleric to a healbot.

Tuco said:

Im rolling a cleric, but why would you want to focus on a character that mostly stands up, heals and sits down? If you wanted to make a battle cleric that melees and tanks, make a paladin.

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Because I'm doing this for nostalgia, and I played a cleric on live way back in the day. But maybe getting a more involved class and boxing it would not be too bad after all, just use the cleric as the main raid character. Mind you, I was undecided between doing the cleric thing again and maybe rolling a shaman, but that's the other end of the spectrum with endless canni dancing.

Philonius said:

Because I'm doing this for nostalgia, and I played a cleric on live way back in the day. But maybe getting a more involved class and boxing it would not be too bad after all, just use the cleric as the main raid character.

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I would go enc personally. You get personal C bot + the best cc/dps class. Others will work, if you want the best, its enc. Also worth remembering that even if you main the Enc gameplay wise in the early expansions cleric gets more involved eventually and enc gets weaker. Good transition to full time cleric if you are really trying to play long term.

If you enjoy the healer lifestyle and want to main a cleric just do it. The playstyle is pretty much as it was back in the day, except at level 20 you get access to the extended target window which helps a lot when healing people not in your group or charm pets. You'll always be wanted for groups and raids.

If you want a box just to camp some stuff (i.e. you're not trying to two-box XP at a non-sucky rate) many things will work. Necro, shaman or SK probably the most powerful outside of charm. Mage if you really want to drive the cleric as your main, they're by far the most effective box character because they require so few keypresses to function. The fact that they are probably the best class for farming low level mobs and need no gear is just icing on the cake.

a lot of people forget that necro charm is really powerful as well and you can start that at level 18. as a nec/shm 2box I could keep most camps clear np. You basically just level from unrest mr>fp>basement then move to lguk br>hamlord/frenzy/king

All these ideas for changes are fun and it's easy to say the developers are dumb and lazy but the fact is if you started making any substantial changes to the classic experience there would be a huge number of people who threw a fit. Like wall to wall pages of forum posts about it.

Lumi said:

Nah, that's a boring ass way to change the game. Adding new mechanics is much better. Relearning where shit is, is just tedious and boring. Learning to strategize vs new mechanics and obstacles is exciting and refreshing.

The whole reason boxing is an issue is because the game is mind numbingly simple. Classes, especially melee, need to be given new abilities and things to do. A good example is what Shards of Dalaya did with monks by making is so that using styles in different orders you produced different effects like debuffs etc. If classes were more complex and engaging, boxing wouldn't be so easy. Mobs can be given anti caster mechanics where you need to position behind them or they'll reflect/absorb your spells so that casters can't always just stand still and brainlessly hit the same buttons over and over again. There's lots of relatively simple things that can be done to make the game far better.

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I agree - to an extent. It'd have to be in an entirely new game engine at that point as there's only so many things you can do without the source code to the EQ client.

The biggest problem I've run into with EQEmulator is that adding all these new things like styles are actually counter-intuitive to the user. You basically have to read a 5-page manual before you even sit down and know everything about your class. This is actually one of the only elements of classic EQ I don't agree with - there's certain parts of the UI that are inconvenient due to lack of technology (like the petwindow, middle mouse scroll wheel, etc) that really should be in but are not. Shards of Dalaya has the same problem; the stances on melee classes are initiated using a command/hotkey, you basically have to type in another command that you've read on their wiki to understand how the game works.

Really, the biggest problem is that the UI isn't intuitive and players won't accept UI changes - people completely dismiss modern convenience in classic EQ by stating 'we had to do it back then so everyone has to suffer as well' and that limits the ability to create engaging content - like stances - on custom servers because people expect some level of replication or accuracy of their classic EQ experience.

The other issue is, even if players were accepting of the content on a mechanical level, displaying them to the end user is a pain in the ass as the UI doesn't natively support showing the benefits in the ATK/AC/ACC stats on the client. The game is basically a guessing game outside of stats that add resource pools. It's an adventure just to see if an item is an upgrade for your playstyle most of the times.

Big example: EQ really needs mouseover spell effect descriptions. Having to press alt and left click on a debuff, or right click and hold on a debuff, isn't intuitive at all. Often times spells don't even have a description, or if they do, you can't tell what it's doing and have to guess by the name or in some cases just example the spell data on lucy to figure out a boss. But people are so accustomed to it that they don't consider the possibilities of having a better description available.