Project Quarm - 1 Box Planes of Power

With the release of The Al'Kabor Project's completed code and move to open source, I'd like to do what I had originally envisioned for EQMac years ago - a one box, PoP progression server which would eventually stop there.

As the EQMac (Al'Kabor) server is now preserved for its fans for all time, it's time to actually continue that dream.


Main Ruleset

• Time-Locked Progression Server:
  • 6 Months of Classic
  • 6 Months of Kunark
  • 6 Months of Velious
  • 6 Months of Luclin
  • Planes of Power is the final expansion
• One-Box Policy, enforced by IP & manual CSR intervention.
• 2002-era combat formulas, accurate to Planes of Power.
• Listed both on a private loginserver and The Al'Kabor Project's public loginserver.
• MGBs at level 1, and other 'TAKP-like' features are enabled selectively.
• Selective Clientside Quality of Life - Mouse Wheel Camera, Buff Timers, Auto-Stand on Cast. Additional QOL may be added in the future.
• P99 style camp, KS'ing, and training rules.
• Raid rules TBD - may try rotating some ideas!
• The 20% Experience Bonus present on TAKProject is enabled here.
• We are using the same group experience rules as June 2003 EverQuest, with one exception - a 6th will not reduce your experience gain
• The Planes of Power Monk AC nerf is not present here.
• Plane of Knowledge can be ported into during any era, but Knowledge books are not present in any town. The Plane of Knowledge scrolls will be added to one of the level appropriate druid and wizard portal merchants that normally sell planar ports for Wizards.

Optional Rulesets
These three rulesets may be toggled on independently or all at once at Level 1 at any Priest of Discord. The process of doing so resets your character and all of its data to as if it had just spawned in the game world, and prevents future ruleset toggling.

Self Found
This is a gametype that restricts interactions with standard ruleset players. This is more akin to a "Group Self Found / Group Ironman" ruleset if enabled by itself. The following restrictions are imposed:

• You cannot group or raid with players who are not also playing the Self Found ruleset.
• You cannot be buffed or healed by other players whom are outside of your experience credit range.
• You cannot trade with other players whom are outside of your experience credit range.
• You cannot purchase items from merchants that aren't already on the merchant.
• You cannot loot items that were handed to an NPC by a player off of the NPC's corpse.
• You cannot sell or buy items in The Bazaar.
• You cannot pick up dropped items on the ground that are dropped by other players. Standard ground spawns do not apply to this rule.
• You cannot loot items from 'opened' corpses. You must receive initial experience credit per the ruleset to loot the item(s) you wish to loot.
• You cannot loot items from corpses of mobs you weren't in group or raid experience credit range of.
• You must engage a creature at 100% HP to receive experience or loot for yourself, your group or your raid, and deal at least 50% of the mob's health in damage to receive experience. NOTE: Normal damage rules additionally apply to the target for experience credit. The NPC regenerating to 100% HP will reset this flag.

Solo Only

This is a gametype that restricts interactions with all other players, including other ruleset players. The restrictions here override the restrictions in Self Found if they would conflict. This is akin to a "Solo Self Found / Ironman" ruleset found in other games. The following restrictions are imposed:

• You cannot group or raid with other players.
• You cannot be buffed or healed by other players.
• You cannot trade with other players.
• You cannot purchase items from merchants that aren't already on the merchant.
• You cannot loot items that were handed to an NPC by a player off of the NPC's corpse.
• You cannot sell or buy items from The Bazaar.
• You cannot pick up dropped items on the ground that are dropped by other players. Standard ground spawns do not apply to this rule.
• You must engage a creature at 100% HP to receive experience or loot for yourself and deal at least 50% of the mob's health in damage to receive experience. Normal damage rules additionally apply to the target for experience credit. The NPC regenerating to 100% HP will reset this flag.
• You cannot loot items from 'opened' corpses. You must receive initial credit per the ruleset to loot the item(s) you wish to loot.

Hardcore

This is a gametype that will result in permanent deletion of your character upon your first death above the item loss level. This is also known as a "Permadeath" ruleset found in other games. There are no restrictions like the rulesets above have, but this may be toggled on in addition to the above two rulesets. NOTE: Characters who have hit a milestone under the hardcore ruleset that die will be broadcast to the entire server. Their corpse will remain in the game world after they die for the normal amount per their level. There will be no character recovery after a death, except in the case of server failure, where we will systematically restore the character(s) affected.

We plan on hosting a testing period and will be wiping the server on release.

Come join us on Discord! Website coming soon.

Some in-dev videos:

Hope to see you on PQ!

Kithani said:

Who is going to police the inmates in the asylum

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The policy I outlined is likely going to be the following for punishment:

I'm going to be VERY picky about which CSRs we pick. Everything will be logged and audited fairly often. CSRs will only have access to investigate and recommend action, and temporarily act - such as muting players, suspending players, and restricting players in various ways. They will not be able to summon items, change levels of other players, etc... they will be able to resurrect players in the case of disputes, summon players to locations, but nothing permanent. Expect to be summoned to one of the various catboxes and left to rot if you're being an asshole.

Permanent decisions are likely going to be stuff like permanent bans, raid suspensions, etc - they will be put in front of my face, and we'll act on those once they're queued up.

They'll likely only involve decisions like training, kill stealing, camp disputes, etc - and will normally have punishments fitting the crime.

We'll get server logs, chat logs, and any video evidence from the CSRs and players in question uploaded to these disputes, so that when we act on them, we do so knowing every bit of the facts of the situation. Trying to avoid 'he said, she said' style stuff. CSRs are a thankless job and the least I want to do is put them in the line of fire. They can act temporarily, but the truth will always come out on top - meaning that temporary bans may be overturned if a CSR is wrong.

If a player ends up disagreeing with a permanent action taken, they will have no recourse, and our policy will be to not discuss actions taken against other players in public or private with anyone other than the person actioned.

Discussing staff action taken in itself against individuals will be handled separately than disputes involving multiple, broader players, such as guilds, where knowing that information is in the best interest of the entire server - such as raid suspensions, etc.

My hope is we can find a proper lead GM so we can quickly iterate on the permanence without me following launch, and I will be picking the best individual for the job based on CSR performance and accuracy, not necessarily the most liked.

Zaide said:

S Secrets What happens when a permadeath character hits max level?

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They stay max level. I'm inclined to give them some sort of reward for making it to specific milestones - only cosmetic via title or something.

Masakari said:

S Secrets Why don't you and Zaide combine forces for a super server?

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Zaide has been helpful and I've been consulting with him among others to make sure we don't forget specifics here.

uncognito said:

Server needs to prioritize adding some non-classic emotes imo

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careful what you ask for