Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

BrotherWu said:

Was EQ actually this terrible? I had so much fun going back and playing WoW Classic but this trip down memory lane sucks.

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If it was it would have been pre alakazam / eq atlas. Really EQ Atlas, with zones this large its just a lot. Also frankly the zones were "big" but these zone are ridiculous. The main city is the size of a Karana and 90% of it is empty. Im playing today with Daidraco while there is WoW maintenance and its okay, but yea its slow, the mobs run a million miles an hour, selling to vendors is a "big brain" moment for the devs to just abandon, but I dont hate it, im just not LOVING it either.

I dunno lots of work to do

Juvarisx said:

If it was it would have been pre alakazam / eq atlas. Really EQ Atlas, with zones this large its just a lot. Also frankly the zones were "big" but these zone are ridiculous. The main city is the size of a Karana and 90% of it is empty. Im playing today with Daidraco while there is WoW maintenance and its okay, but yea its slow, the mobs run a million miles an hour, selling to vendors is a "big brain" moment for the devs to just abandon, but I dont hate it, im just not LOVING it either.

I dunno lots of work to do

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The vendor thing takes some getting used to, but I have found the system rather useful for farming items off the vendors. If I want cloth scraps, I just need to go look at the two vendors who buy them, not 100 different vendors across the city. I remember vendor farming in EQ too, so it's an improvement in that regard.

As for the city size, I assume it's due to the plan to have non-instanced player housing/shops. Most of the city is for rent, but that system isn't really in place yet.

Sylas exact number of players is off but the idea I think is right. This game isn’t gonna work with 3-5k per server. At around 600-800 simultaneous people per server I really don’t think the lack of instancing will matter unless you get a disproportionate excess of no lifers on a single server. I know some of the poopiest poopsockers you can imagine and even with Sam death walker levels of boxing you are not locking down everything there is. The issue is people will complain if the specific thing they want is not available but I’m ok with that

Also I don’t think this game is gonna be all about raiding like wow or eq velious onwards was. There will be some raids but you will spend most of your time on single group camps and probably the most fun part being dungeon exploration /break ins. If you think this is gonna just be loaded with raid zones you’ll be disappointed

Pasteton said:

Pasteton said:

I know some of the poopiest poopsockers you can imagine and even with Sam death walker levels of boxing you are not locking down everything there is.

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Also I don’t think this game is gonna be all about raiding like wow or eq velious onwards was. There will be some raids but you will spend most of your time on single group camps and probably the most fun part being dungeon exploration /break ins. If you think this is gonna just be loaded with raid zones you’ll be disappointed

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So wait... which is it? There is going to be such a vast amount of raid content that no single guild will be able to lock it down... or this game won't be loaded with raid zones?

Sylas said:

I think they said 2k uniques? total was like 5k but that included over half which had like less than 2 hours play time over the whole play test, probably bank alts.

but lets pretend its 5k unique players (it isnt)

if you can only get a few thousand people to show up to play when its free then you will be lucky to get a fraction of that to pay monthly for what they admit it a half baked game that they don't want people to see yet or judge them on.

I think 500 is fair for the conversion rate to paid player period, ie after 30 days, assuming they continue to refuse to launch on steam.

That's total btw. The PVP server will be just like Rallos Zek on EQlive, ie it exists for a single player and his box army. Botter server will have 300-400 players and the non botter server will have the rest until they shut it down and merge them onto the botter server, and that will be after the no-box guys beg them for a merge so they can actually play the game.

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Rallos Zek was the pvp server the rest merged into because it had the highest remaining population. How it retained any population after pvp was completely ruined by Luclin/PoP and later no drop augs (which made nothing lootable in pvp) is anyone's guess.


How did PoP (esp) ruin pvp? Oh I dunno, lure spells getting resisted along with everything else at end game is a good start. Classic through Velious was a great time.

BrotherWu said:

Besides the dogshit UI monkey motions, this is one of the first things I noticed. Why is the town so FUCKING HUGE and empty? I guess if you can get past the running simulator aspects and EQ UI, maybe there is an enjoyable game there? I had high hopes for this but it's looking like a pass for me.

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You end up in different parts of the city with class quests and new areas for your trainers depending on what you roll.

Burns said:

The vendor thing takes some getting used to, but I have found the system rather useful for farming items off the vendors. If I want cloth scraps, I just need to go look at the two vendors who buy them, not 100 different vendors across the city. I remember vendor farming in EQ too, so it's an improvement in that regard.

As for the city size, I assume it's due to the plan to have non-instanced player housing/shops. Most of the city is for rent, but that system isn't really in place yet.

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I feel like the vendor thing is one of those things that makes sense in a realism sense, and is a neat "feature" when you first start. But eventually it becomes tiresome. People will say it's not a big deal to run to a dozen different vendors to sell shit, but after a while it's just tedium. You already know where they all are, now you're just hauling shit around a giant city as a chore.

Pasteton said:

Also I don’t think this game is gonna be all about raiding like wow or eq velious onwards was. There will be some raids but you will spend most of your time on single group camps and probably the most fun part being dungeon exploration /break ins. If you think this is gonna just be loaded with raid zones you’ll be disappointed

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If you have raids, they will have the best loot. If they didn't no one would bother with the raids at all. It's just a fact.

It's why everyone ends up funneling into the same few areas in these types of games, and why making a massive world is meaningless. Your players will go to where the best xp/hr is or the best loot is. Especially in a game like this that is built around time sinks.

BrotherWu said:

Was EQ actually this terrible? I had so much fun going back and playing WoW Classic but this trip down memory lane sucks.

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Honestly? Yeah, EverQuest really was that rough by modern standards. What a lot of people forget is that the "magic" they remember wasn't from elegant design, it was from being new. It was the first time most of us had ever been in a 3D online world, chatting with strangers, exploring giant dungeons, and dying horribly in them.

Strip away the nostalgia and you were left with a game that punished discovery, wasted time at every turn, and relied on social dependency to mask technical and mechanical limitations. Things like corpse runs that made death a 45+-minute recovery mission every death/wipe, mobs camping zonelines or being a PITA to deal with because pathing was broken, downtime loops that forced you to sit and med for literally 10+ minutes between bigger pulls, "socialization" that was forced because nobody could do anything alone, etc.

WoW hit differently because it was built on EQ's framework after Blizzard stripped out the masochism. It was still slow and social, but it respected your time. EQ by contrast was designed around delaying gratification as long as possible.

So yeah, your memory isn't lying. EQ wasn't secretly brilliant, it was just first. The nostalgia's for the era, the novelty, the people, and being 17 years old - not the design.

there are ultra rare drops that are as good as raid drops currently, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stays that way as some of those things are crazy rare. There’s so few raid targets that I am aware of that it’s hard to really compare, and most are currently level locked. They are also not really ‘raid’ targets - I’d say at most 2 group and probably 1 for some people. There’s no 40-50 person targets yet (tho I think there will be a dragon in the city at some point )

Quaid as far as which it is - I was thinking of the group content . There is enough of it that I think instancing is unnecessary .

Can’t speak much on raid content as I’ve seen little of it so far, but again this is probably not the game for the ex wow classic /bc folks who think they’ll be spending all their time in raid zones every week(or eq tov /pop ). This game will be much more eq 1999 , with group content and a vox and Naggy .

Pasteton said:

there are ultra rare drops that are as good as raid drops currently, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stays that way as some of those things are crazy rare. There’s so few raid targets that I am aware of that it’s hard to really compare, and most are currently level locked. They are also not really ‘raid’ targets - I’d say at most 2 group and probably 1 for some people. There’s no 40-50 person targets yet (tho I think there will be a dragon in the city at some point )

Quaid as far as which it is - I was thinking of the group content . There is enough of it that I think instancing is unnecessary .

Can’t speak much on raid content as I’ve seen little of it so far, but again this is probably not the game for the ex wow classic /bc folks who think they’ll be spending all their time in raid zones every week(or eq tov /pop ). This game will be much more eq 1999 , with group content and a vox and Naggy .

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Before Kunark there was like 30+ hours of potential raid content in Fear, Hate, Sky, Vox, Naggy, and Phinny every week. We had different experiences in EQ for sure.

But ok… they’re going to combat poopsocking by having so few raid encounters that there will be no viable raid game at all? I don’t understand what you’re saying.

Also, do you have a reference for any of these things you’re saying they’ll do?

Gravel said:

I feel like the vendor thing is one of those things that makes sense in a realism sense, and is a neat "feature" when you first start. But eventually it becomes tiresome. People will say it's not a big deal to run to a dozen different vendors to sell shit, but after a while it's just tedium. You already know where they all are, now you're just hauling shit around a giant city as a chore.

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As a crafter, I like the system, but yeah, it could be a little closer together. I haven't used the north side of town often but there looks to be a good cluster right by the gate. For the West bank area, the Night Market area could use a proper cook and an "armor" merchant, since leather is so far away. With that, it would take care of most everything in one place?

Burns said:

As a crafter, I like the system, but yeah, it could be a little closer together. I haven't used the north side of town often but there looks to be a good cluster right by the gate. For the West bank area, the Night Market area could use a proper cook and an "armor" merchant, since leather is so far away. With that, it would take care of most everything in one place?

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North gate has no smithys. You have to cross the whole city to smelt metal bars

... said:

North gate has no smithys. You have to cross the whole city to smelt metal bars

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That's not really a vendor issue though! There is a forge next to the woodworkers area in the docks, just to the east of the portal from north gate to the docks. Don't remember the vendor situation there though.

I'll peep that dock forge. Sounds way faster

But vendors there arnt bad. A cook, general store. Shady guy. Leather worker, tailor i think a used weapon guy

Nirgon said:

Rallos Zek was the pvp server the rest merged into because it had the highest remaining population. How it retained any population after pvp was completely ruined by Luclin/PoP and later no drop augs (which made nothing lootable in pvp) is anyone's guess.


How did PoP (esp) ruin pvp? Oh I dunno, lure spells getting resisted along with everything else at end game is a good start. Classic through Velious was a great time.

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that was such a weird time on rz... ldon era... basically pvp loot was dead 1 week later and everything did change

... said:

I'll peep that dock forge. Sounds way faster

But vendors there arnt bad. A cook, general store. Shady guy. Leather worker, tailor i think a used weapon guy

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you can sneak through the cemetary into the necro vendor alley from north gate too.