What Made EQ Great? Tell your stories to a filthy casual

ZyyzYzzy_sl said:

I hear EQN will allow people to select ambiguous sexes for their characters.

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Will they still be able to get pregnant?

I remember playing a Barbarian shaman up to level 40 or so, and then my friend from the top raiding guild told me I had to re-roll to a troll shaman for the hp regen. I loved the barb starting zone so much I figured out a way I could quest myself so I wasn't kill on sight in a different starting city. It required killing a shit-ton of gnolls in blackburrow, which made me un-kos to local vendors, then sneaking into Halas (the Barb starting city) past the KoS guards/npcs to a guy that would take white polar bear pelts and give some gold/faction. A buddy sat there and invised me after every turn in so the roaming guards wouldn't kill me (they did plenty of times). Eventually, once I was dubious, I was able to hand them in myself. Nobody believed I was really a troll (they thought I was using an illusion). The whole city was now friendly to me (asides the fucking rogue guild which unfortunately included the banker; never found a way to increase that faction). Combined with the OT hammer and it was no big deal to bank and recall back to bind.

A somewhat related story was vendor farming. Basically a vendor kept all items that were sold to them, but only displayed the last 20 or so items that were sold. With the highest faction you could buy items and sell them to another nearby vendor and only take a few percentage point hit out of the pocket. Once you bought out all of one item, the 21st most recently sold item was now available to purchase. I made a killing doing this in newb zones buying all the spider silk/tradeskill items that got sold, but buried by other items. This is how I got a ton of polar bear pelts to get liked in a good city as a troll. Made thousands of PP (back in Kunark days when it was still valuable) doing this for the top raiding guild getting ice giant toes for alchemy potions.

Old School Plane of Mischief. Abusing horrible stacking mechanics between PoM flowers, Elemental Shield, Druid circles, mage fire DS and bard song.

turning off the computer while zoning in order to avoid PKers

Malakriss_sl said:

Old School Plane of Mischief. Abusing horrible stacking mechanics between PoM flowers, Elemental Shield, Druid circles, mage fire DS and bard song.

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Ooo pom was a hot one for a long time. I must have spent days in that zone when I first got in there trying to explain it to everyone was impossible.

Quaid_sl said:

Faggots are part of the game!

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Darned straight! (Or not, thats personal... )

Fight_sl said:

Uhh... Furor pop? Holy shit, I wonder what kinda loot he drops. Let's kill him and find out.

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He drops two of these-

Cloth Cap
Slot: HEAD
AC: 2
WT: 0.2 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
Slot type 7:empty
NPCs sell this at 2g9c
NPCs buy this at (unknown)
EQ item ID: 1001

And ya on the gratitude for saves etc - I used to do the same thing back on the Toril/Sojourn MUD before EQ, mostly for the occasional person who wandered into Undermountain before they realised it was a place of horror and death. With all the teleports, bottomless black pits, un-noted but overlong corridors, and fire-shielded tracking critters in there it was so very very easy to get lost and killed in there if you werent exactly the right class/alignment/gear. Although Faille did get her Fade from in there before we got serious about the dungeon, I think it was actually Mplor and I who first fully mapped the place, and being the right class/alignmen/gear I was the go-to mangina for CRs down there, and the warm fuzzies from being able to help people out was reward enough.

Saved a group who accidentally took the key into the crypt with them in that mini crypt zone (cant remember the name now, but FoH pioneered it shortly before leaving for EQ) and died, leaving them no way back to their corpses, with corpse-rot looming. Had to clear my way through Undermountain and deep into Undermountain 2 to trigger a crash bug I knew of to respawn the key for them outside so they could CR themselves. That was the one time I ever deliberately crashed the MUD, but it was a joy to be able to do it for them.

the first time realizing a orc warrior was a fuck ton tougher than an orc warrior. oh, and shouting "a sand giant hits YOU for 36 damage!" in oasis and watching all the noobs shit themselves.

VariaVespasa_sl said:

I got a couple of scammers banned for stealing those regen tunics from people (Edit- Ah, Ceremonial Iksar Chestplate, from Traks Teeth, that was it), so I guess that would be a risk/reward kinda thing.

Even got a whiny tell from one of the first guys friends the next day saying "Why did you do that, scamming is part of the game." And like I told him, if thieves are part of the game then so are the cops.

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Well those guys suck at it because I definitely made more money before Velious than I could ever spend playing through PoP.


We stopped doing it eventually and focused more on raiding.

VariaVespasa_sl said:

Cloth Cap

NPCs sell this at 2g9c

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Brad and Co were so convinced by the whining on the forums at stratics and other places leading up to the development and release of EQ. It was easy for the average player in UO to get plate armor or what ever armor he wanted on his character. It wouldn't be anything special, but at least you got something basic. I remember all the threads on those forums about how easy it was to get armor in UO and it should be rare, unique, and expensive in EQ.

EQ wanted plate armor to be worth what a learjet is worth now days comparably speaking. I still remember him saying that in an interview or forum thread. Which made very little sense both in real life but more so in a fantasy setting. Yes, armor was expensive in the medieval ages, but it was funded in a similar fashion as expensive military tech is funded now days through taxation and multi-source funding (which made maintaining a standing army for kings very expensive and rare for nobles). But in a fantasy setting where orcs and goblins are coming over the hills on a daily basis, odds are armor would be rather cheap and easy to obtain. A lot more people would take up the armor smithing and weapon smithing trade and there would be a lot more funding for standing guards and armies. It behooves a king to not have his villagers picked off on a daily basis.

So you ended up with a bunch of the NPC armors just sitting there with hardly anybody buying them. Did anyone really buy Fine Steel Plate from the NPCs? You could find significantly cheaper in Gfay/EC trading and from drops (I forget the name of the blue quest plate).

They also did that with NPC potions. Made them extremely expensive which made little to no sense.

Aside from crafting recipes and components, did anyone really buy weapons, armor, or potions from NPCs?

the extra polygons nowadays are a real bottleneck for another game like eq to ever come out.

I was thinking about why the newer mmo's don't do something as simple as have an enemy equip/display the item that theyre gonna drop (like sarnak battle shield etc). In eq it was a matter of hastily taking the 3d sprite for the item and haphazardly attaching it somewhere on the mob. It didn't matter if it didnt fit correctly etc because the graphics were blocky and clunky anyways.

Now having a super glittery chest piece show on an enemy, and then also redo/readjust it for players, would be an incredible amount of work.
Having dungeons the size of - well, any eq dungeon - that are handcrafted (guk, seb - how many memorable areas and rooms?) - the art assets back then were a matter of some blocky graphics and sprites quickly made and transferred to the game. Now, with today's 1080p and super engines, creating the same amount of environs would be mindboggling.

Saving manpower/time with art assets meant eq could really churn out the content. Really think about it - how much content did eq have compared to MMOs of current day?

Compare landmass size, environment variety, number of nameds mobs and drops, and number of raid mobs, in eq to most other games. I am pretty sure TOV alone had more raid targets then WOW+RIF and all their expansions put together.

Better graphics -> more manpower needed to create art assets -> less content -> greater need for instancing.

Adebisi_sl said:

Are there really any other games out there with real death consequences and high stakes these days?

Only one I can think of right now is Day-Z

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Haven & Hearth. Java MMORPG, it's a harsh little game.

Pasteton_sl said:

the extra polygons nowadays are a real bottleneck for another game like eq to ever come out.

I was thinking about why the newer mmo's don't do something as simple as have an enemy equip/display the item that theyre gonna drop (like sarnak battle shield etc). In eq it was a matter of hastily taking the 3d sprite for the item and haphazardly attaching it somewhere on the mob. It didn't matter if it didnt fit correctly etc because the graphics were blocky and clunky anyways.

Now having a super glittery chest piece show on an enemy, and then also redo/readjust it for players, would be an incredible amount of work.
Having dungeons the size of - well, any eq dungeon - that are handcrafted (guk, seb - how many memorable areas and rooms?) - the art assets back then were a matter of some blocky graphics and sprites quickly made and transferred to the game. Now, with today's 1080p and super engines, creating the same amount of environs would be mindboggling.

Saving manpower/time with art assets meant eq could really churn out the content. Really think about it - how much content did eq have compared to MMOs of current day?

Compare landmass size, environment variety, number of nameds mobs and drops, and number of raid mobs, in eq to most other games. I am pretty sure TOV alone had more raid targets then WOW+RIF and all their expansions put together.

Better graphics -> more manpower needed to create art assets -> less content -> greater need for instancing.

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it's 2013. if it could be done in 1999, it could be done now. the problem isn't the money, it's what it's being allocated to. instead of putting the $$$ into creating elaborate dungeons and rare items, it's put into cutscenes, talking NPC's with famous actor voice overs, having 100 people working on the game with another 100 for marketing, and making characters that look like the lion king with skyscraper shoulder pads with facial expressions that supposedly "add" realism to the game. point being, they're concentrating on the things that most players don't give a shit about and not focusing on the things that really matter.

dgrabs_sl said:

Not long. I want to say they typically sold for about 1pp 1g or so.

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Cracked staff was only about a gold. Back then, 1 plat was a LOT. And rusted weapons only sold for like 60 silver.

It wasn't until you hit the Dervish Cutthroats in North Ro who dropped Bronze weapons that the value went up to a plat.

I remember at level 3 FINALLY raising enough money (around 1 plat) to buy a Sr. Apprentice Robe*

It was so fucking awesome. I finally had a robe that other people didn't have, and it had +1 or 2 Mana! Holy shit, stats. Why did it have the asterisk in its name, anyway?

Ya, what etchazz said.

I really think the people that made EQ played their own game, loved their own game, and were putting in features because they thought it would be "cool" and not just because it was on their project sheet.

Everything scales. Games were more simple back then, but only when you compare it to today. One of the major selling points back when EQ launched were the graphics. They were considered great for that day and age. Most people had to buy new computers or cutting edge graphics cards just to play the game. So, I am not convinced you can make the argument that EQ was able to churn out content because it was so simple to do so.

Allocation of resources and giving the developers the license to develop is the much more likely reason for the difference between 1999 EQ and 2013 stagnant state of MMO's.

The day I bought a fine steel sword from a vendor, I was so chuffed. I wouldn't use it all the time in case it dulled or broke (why else were there sharpening stones and where did rusty weapons come from?).

Xarpolis_sl said:

Cracked staff was only about a gold. Back then, 1 plat was a LOT.

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Someone musta been a Troll with 35 charisma The rest of us got fat stacks for our Cracked Shiz.

Cracked Staff
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: 1H Blunt Atk Delay: 32
DMG: 5 Dmg Bonus: 25
Merchant Value: 1 pp 2 gp 0 sp 0 cp

Trying to remember a couple things since I started reading this thread. When was it that they nerfed the fungi drop? And if I remember correctly, although you could equip weapons like the yak on new toons, they didn't proc until a certain lvl or something. Was discussing this with a friend over drinks the other night as we were getting all shitty and nostalgic.

supertouch_sl said:

turning off the computer while zoning in order to avoid PKers

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At one point pulling your connection plug while zoning would crash the zone and reset spawns. I used this a few times to reset Akheva and farm that easy-ass golem.

For me what made it great was it was challenging but you could slack and mess around. As a cleric I found the pace of combat was perfect and it was the change to cleric play a few years back that stopped me playing. I enjoyed waiting and watching for the exact right time to get the most out my mana and allow my group to fight as much as possible. I remember the crazy fights where we only just won. The fights we shouldn't have won. The fights we didn't win but came very close or we salvaged something from them.

It wasn't a game about APM but patience and strategy, acting at the right time in the right way with the right tools while others in the group did the same.

Then the lore and story, the why we fought, it made sense. I went out of my way to fight orcs (they were attacking my homeland), undead and and dark elves ( I never really considered ogres and trolls evil but dark elves and undead definitely were).
I killed the lord of Freeport as a paladin friend from Freeport explained he was evil, not because it was needed as part of a quest (yeah, I was a pain ).