Concerned

[HopefulButConcerned101]

Hello all,

I cant tell you how happy I am to see this project. My little brother told me about it a few months ago, as I havent looked at EQ in a long time. I'm ecstatic! ... but a little disappointed and concerned about some of the things I am reading. I hope the staff seriously considers my points.

First, I played EQ on day 1. I was the first Wizard to hit level 50 on my server, Fennin Ro, and I am the one who lost to Drakky in the arena with my wizard, and then pvp'ed him for a win with my Enchanter the next day. I was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins" event, I was in the raid. I was also the first person to challenge Fironia Vie, and die horribly at the gates of Felwithe while the DM controlled toon opened the new zone, Fironia Vie. Needless to say I am as old school as it gets. Forgive me, but we are talking something like 20 years ago and my memory is not perfect, going forward here. I had characters on several pve servers, I founded the guild, "Elven Royal guard." I had characters on the base pvp server, the race war pvp server and the alignment based pvp server (frakin newts!). two 50 Wizards, three 50 Enchanters, two 50 Necromancers, 50 Mage. As you can see I loved casters. I also soloed a paladin to 50 to prove a point (its not about being trained or ksed, its about being strategic, its not about spawn rates or being pl'ed, its about patience, thought, and tactics). ah, what was that awesome helm called...it had a heal spell, I cant remember, and of course a rubicite wearing 50 warrior, which they nerfed, along with all 3 of my chanters. lol. oh, and a 50 cleric. and a 50 druid. I was there when we freed the big dragon at the end, I was among the 10,000 corpses the first time we failed and she flew all over norrath killing everyone in every zone, regardless of level. Cant remember the dragons name, the sleeper? or nagafen? I think nagafen was in sol A?? I canna remember. I quit shortly after that, to many nerfs, to many whiners, game was not the same. So, my memory really fails at that point. oh lava duct crawlers! the coveted golden efreeti boots, nagafen was sol b?

Anyways, here goes....

What made original EQ awesome was not just the difficulty, it was the competition and the exploration. These 3 things played a pivotal role in the game, creating a realistic social atmosphere. But most of all, the DM interaction and events. I will give examples coming up, but first lets talk about spawn reduction. Being boxed in at the newbie zone and racial starting area was part of the game. This did a few things. You met lots of people, right off! It created a bond between the players starting in these zones. People fantasizing about being the good guy started as high elves or wood elves, they had like minds, saw the game and their role similarly, and the same went for people playing dark elves, they wanted to be evil, and had that same mentality. My favorite was Felwithe and Kelethin. The crushbone orcs and orc hill, especially on the pvp servers. I had more fun guarding orc hill with my 4th enchanter, keeping her at level 16, permanently, fighting against level 12 dark elf pk'ers, hunting newbs in crushbone on the pvp server in my guild, Royal elven guard, than anywhere else, or in any other game. You were crowded in and forced to be social, you had to either befriend people and join them, or make enemies and compete with them. Survival by natural selection, if you cant group, you will level slow and be left behind. This caused tension. Tension is social. You also memorized your zone, the spawns, the drops, etc, as you were stuck here for a bit, and it gave you time to learn before you reached higher levels, and a reason to start new characters of other races. Dying 50 times in the newb zone taught you how NOT to die in the higher level zones, where losing exp really hurt. That's why those punk snowflakes sucked so bad at level 50, they were PL'ed by wizards using ice comet, and had no idea how to use their character in a group. I had 3 enchanters BECAUSE I wanted to start in different areas, with different races. My elf Wizard was level 50 before I ever saw Paneel, I made my erudite, specifically to enjoy this area. I was a master player, and the highest level on my server (I am literally 1 of the first 10 people to ever hit level 50 in EQ), and had never seen that side of the world, it was almost like playing a new game. A loving high elf enchanter in felwithe, an evil dark elf mage in Nektolus, an arrogant erudite wizard in paneel, roleplay meant something, and is social. This also made you a guide to characters of other races, a reason to make friends as you all spread out from home, while keeping a level of loyalty to said starting zone (role- players/ remember the purple tag?). It was also part of the difficulty. Fast spawns effected how you pulled, when you pulled and where you pulled to. You could get really messed up in that forest fort with the giants, they spawned so fast. It was part of the calculation when pulling, and part of the crowding. Competing for camps was an issue, and remember every issue becomes a social event. "Train to zone" was a common occurrence, and players had to learn how to cope with it. Not standing in the middle of the road in front of the zone, thinking you were safe to med up. Fear of death ment something, it was the core of the game, dying and losing 2 days of experience was a nightmare, and made you play better. Made you think, made you work as a teammate far better. I built social bonds with many people. I became famous, because I guarded the zone entrances with my enchanter, dropping an area mesmerize, and then a mem blur on entire trains, saving countless lives. Karnors keep, the left side for zoning in the right side for zoning out, that was all me, because I guarded the entrance with mesmerization to stop trains for my guild as they held the keep. I got into so many groups and made so many friends, just because of that. The games today suck, you just respawn, no harm no foul. That is a joke to a serious EQ player back in the day. Dying was punishment, dont die! Play smart. There was no safe place. The mobs were abundant, spawning everywhere and walking around, pathing everywhere. It took sometimes hours to find what you thought was a safe pulling point. There was no safe place, the game was not designed to be a solo game. Shamans were not making SoW potions so people could run across norrath, only the poor and those who sucked did that, everyone else took a port. Shamans sold sow pots so you could navigate the wild areas, due to nonstop respawns and pathing. A way to escape death, train to zone! These are the tactics the original programmers used to force social interaction. Reducing spawn rates gives Necros and Mages complete dominance over the zone (this is exactly why everyone today thinks they are OP). Fear kiting was dangerous, you never knew when your target would walk into the path of another mob. Killing the mob fast was the mages thing, if he didnt, the mob would spawn again right on top of his rooted enemy, we called them adds, and this is why enchanters were important. You negate the purpose of the enchanter if there is no threat of nonstop adds. And then of course there are pvp players. Sneaking into your racial, or alignment enemies newb zones was fantastic fun. If you were spotted, they would be yelling your location out in the zone. What made sneaking hard was a multitude of invis seeing undead, respawning and walking everywhere. Chanters turning into trees to avoid being seen by the newb party and then having to slowly crawl away without them noticing the tree was moving, so you could invis undead before that random skele crossed your path, you see him coming!!! You cant get into the dark elf city to hunt lower level guards if you cant get pass the high level gate guards. This is WHY level 1 skeles were everywhere in newb zones. This is why they had a spawn rate of 30 seconds, and this is why they had agro toward any level. You have taken a major part of the social interaction out of the game, and lowered the difficulty bar tremendously by reducing spawn rates. Your not going to attract the original player base by pandering to the very people who couldn't handle this type of higher level game play that led to the fall of EQ and the rise of garbage like WoW. The precedent today is how easy can we make it. Original EQ was not children, it was young adults looking for a challenging environment. You cannot release something called original EQ, and right off the rip nerf the starting zones. That initial struggle MATTERS, and sets the stage for the rest of the game.

Exploration was a big deal. Slowly, advancing from zone to zone, with the tension of imminent death looming over your head while you searched for a new place to hunt in at your level was surreal. Higher level mobs, stalking you as you traversed the wild. Trying to avoid being spotted while they pathed everywhere. I dont see how you can avoid removing this, as everyone playing knows the world, and is just recreating a character, but possibly finding a way to move some things would be nice. I remember stumbling upon a cave, hidden in a forest under some brush. It was a whole zone! noone even heard of it....the place with all the giant floating sperm cells. I cant remember the name. what a laugh though.

Kill stealing..everyone hated it. but it was part of the social atmosphere. You did not want to solo as a tank when a mage could come along and one shot your kill to finish him off and grab the experience, infuriating!! but this caused warriors to find groups. Now we have a reason for the cleric. Instead of warriors sitting forever, they are looking for that cleric buddy, a big part of EQ was warriors and clerics learning how to support each other. Warriors learning to protect the cleric even if everyone else in the group dies. The cleric can res, and only he can (there were very few paladins I my time). That bond mattered at high levels, it mattered in raids, it created friends, and in the KSer's case, enemies. Everything that forced the group ... removed the solo player. If you want an easy solo play, then we have Skyrim. EQ was a group game. KSing revealed a characters personality, you knew that Gergeo375 was a bad guy, he is known for ksing. You now know that he will grab the rare loot w/o the groups consent soon as the mob falls. Bad guys matter, they are part of the real social environment. There were parties specifically designed to punk a solo mage kser. I made a Mage specifically to KS (an evil dark elf mage, so acted evil). It was my mission with that mage. I had fun searching for parties I could KS, and they had fun trying to stop me. I made enemies with that mage too. I was hated on that server, HATED. But that was part of it. My enchanter was loved, famous, and sought out by everyone. I logged in with my enchanter and immediately received 100 tells with people wanting to me join them, even begging me. I logged in with my Mage on a different server and immediately received 100s of tells with people hunting me. I had bounty's placed on my head. People trying to train me, looking for me, finding me, waiting patiently for me to engage something, and then dragging a train on me. All, more social interaction. More comradery. Better teams. More fun. The bad guys give the good guys a reason to team up, otherwise they are sitting by themselves bored. Grinding, grinding, grinding. Then that kser hits them a few times, now we have a party, a party searching for a mage in an forest infested with giant wasps, that respawn every 30 seconds, and path everywhere. They are locked in nonstop combat looking for the boss mob, that fricken ksing mage! and when they find him, the thrill of the fight is amazing. and look, they jumped 2 levels in the process of being in a group. 6 hrs went by and noone realized it. Shat man, I got to go to work! (I realize that's predominately a pvp server thing/but it was also when players chose to be pvp on pve servers, when they engaged pvp they became pvp with him, also nerfed though)but nothing beats the NICE cleric, if you run a nice cleric, not a prick who thinks you owe him, you are god in original EQ. log in, crash, log in crash, log in, only 500 tells this time. ehehe

Controlling raid zones and high level zones was part of the guild dynamic. SON, seekers of norrath, was famous for owning the outer plane zones on my main server. You either joined them (more social interaction) or you joined someone else to compete with them (more social interaction) or made some kind of treaty, or bargain with them to hunt there. or 5 smaller guilds banded together and raided SON first, then the held the zone. On the pvp server, this led to wars, which is the point of pvp. We had wars of 100 vs 100 that sometimes got so out of hand the server would crash. Wars... this also goes to the DM interaction. I cant remember the name of the forest, it was above the halfling city. It was basically a good zone, lighted nicely, and low level. The DM's held an event where they raided half the countryside with mid to high level undead, several of which were named 50+ level undead kings (DM controlled) and half of the server population participated. We were on the phones calling people to get on their character and help us!! People called out of work, or left early to get in on this giant war with the DM undead army. This is why EQ was called EVERCRACK. When it was done and said, we lost, the people of norrath lost, and that zone was forever changed to a dark forest, filled with high level undead (kithicor, yes?). It had an actual game changing effect. At that point, we never knew wth the DM's would do. Guilds really mean something now. You wanted to be part of a guild so you could deal with DM's raids against your zones. Zones started to become "yours." Bixbie invasions, giant bee things with human heads were hell, and helluva fun. DM's taking control of the festering hags in Unrest was the greatest fun. I see you guys talking about not wanting trains. Banning people for training. In the original EQ, the vanilla version that you want to simulate here, the DM's themselves deliberately created trains and ran the entire population right out of Unrest. Train to zone!!! A DM created train. We had to form up in groups and go in with a strategy to overcome being wiped from a festering hags train (high levels guarding low levels) and that fricken giant hand!! the god DM. we would bond together, 3 or 4 major guilds and come running to kill that train and reclaim Unrest. 15 hours to organize and execute. Again, social interaction. There will be nothing nostalgic about vanilla EQ w/o DM interaction. It'll be a game with poor graphics and alot of stress that holds the attention of only a few die hard players. It wont take long before they go back to their established characters, guilds, and friends, on w/e server they are currently playing on. I will not come back to play a 20 year old game with Nintendo level graphics, w/o the DM interaction, w/o the trains, and w/o the nonstop frenzy spawning and pathing. It wont be hard, it will be boring. Nostalgia will not be there, its not the same game. Anti-socializing is what killed EQ to begin with. I started a character not to long ago, to play with my little brother. Everyone is soloing with a merc, double or triple boxing multiple characters and there is very little social interaction. Lots of talk maybe, but not interaction with their toons in the fight against mobs and each other. It reminds me of an old AOL chat room. If the community is begging for original EQ then you need to give them original EQ, not just another server that completely misses the point of original EQ, which was, again, social interaction, TEAMS. These level 85 SK's I was shown, this is a whole different game now, what they call EQ now, is totally different. Guy running through a zone pulling 100 mobs and killing them all with an aoe is retarded. I mean these are blue cons, in my day it took a group to kill a single blue con, or a well armed twink and his cleric buddy, unless you wanted 5 minutes of downtime after every fight. Why not play diablo? that is not EQ, what I was shown is a far cry from original EQ. Minimizing my screen to switch characters spell or action after spell or action, the strategy being the best combo of spells, never the best teamwork. If these guys want Original EQ, then understand most of old EQ was outside. Was trains, ksing, and running for your life due to nonstop spawning. Learning, planning, and executing a strategy to pull safely to the place your team called "camp" Only necros soloed, and 50% of the time they were begging to join soemones group. They remade the necro and gave him all this mana swapping crap specifically so he could group, because even the solo class itself, couldnt really solo. and that was the first major unbalance of the game.

The horror show of difficulty WAS original EQ. Corpse running, paying a cleric 200 plat for a 90% rez. Renting a necro to grab your corpse and drag it from harm, or negotiating with a guild, yours or someone elses to fight their way to the bottom of Sol B for a corpse retrieval, a 6 hour fight, a quest, a player created quest. A guild of 30, 8 of them dying en route to your corpse, more corpse runs, everyone stressed, and then the final satisfaction of retrieval. Paying wizards for teleports to keep from running for 3 hours across the plains. Negotiations, friends, deals, enemies, all part of the social interaction. Enchanters mezzing entire parties in pvp, charming the wizard and setting him against the cleric, then re-messing, and wiping the melee one at a time (also nerfed). 1 guy takes all 6 of you out, while you rant at each other in chat about it! or you resist that mes! and the chanter is running for dear life, the exhilaration of rooting him and killing him! the REVENGE!!! nothing feels better. That heart pumping, "I'm gonna get that guy!" every class had a niche it could fill, and w/o each other we were screwed. Necros holding entire camps, Mage KSers, Wizard robberbarrons, Enchanter warmongers, Druid lifesavers, the ever elusive cleric, the struggling paladin, the sucky warrior who suddenly becomes the key to everything high level, the tricky rogue, the rich shaman, etc. You take away the bad stuff and the good stuff is meaningless.

The stress, and tension made EQ famous. The complaints of the snowflakes killed it. "why cant I spawn with my armor on?" because dying is punishment.
"why did I lose all my experience when I died" because dying is punishment
"They spawn to fast, its to hard to pull" Then practice, and learn, get innovative
"what does pulling mean?" pfft

"why do all the players suck?" because there is no consequence for being stupid.

Dont lower the spawn rates.
Create DM controlled events.
Dont punish Ksers, or trainers.
Dont block guilds from holding zones.
That is vanilla EQ.

Deepwater helm? was that it? the solo paladins dream, oh and a shiny new mithril 2hander with a hand me down fbss

that is old school EQ.

Twinks. The beloved twink in your group, who can hold that horde of bandits long enough to pull that TRAIN TO ZONE.

NOOOO! I died right as I zoned and my body collapsed on the other side of the wall!!

cry...

That is old school EQ.

Its the emotion. I can only think of 2 other games that had it in the last 30 years. Eve online, and Rust.

The new players are hearing from the old players how cool the game was. You yourself must remember it or you wouldn't be doing this project. Keep the emotion in the game. Keep the hate and the anger. Its what drives us. The frustration is what gives the feeling of satisfaction. Your newbie EQ players, and yea almost all of you are newbies to us, are already complaining about the very things that were taken out and ruined the game. It wasn't luclin that ruined EQ, it was the whiners. It got boring and then WOW stole the show. Then they did it to wow, and wow sucked and now everyone is scattered amongst 50 crap wannabee MMO's all dreaming of original EQ.

I pray you reconsider adjusting the spawn rates, that one thing will bring me back. Brad was the genius, not you. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Follow his model.

[Chortles Snort|eS]

https://i.imgur.com/3Od9IqZ.jpg

[Ripqozko]

Yikes

[Indicas]

wow, i gave up reading after the first sentence

[Baler]

So much text

[Indicas]

So much text
yes so much of saying nothing in this post pretty much, sounds like this guy was the first to do everything and was there for any major event in WoW and EQ... reminds me of this https://www.google.com/search?q=i+was+there+meme&hl=en&sxsrf=ACYBGNQjlsAKNWEDS4on8GzRfbioDnu8dQ:157201295 1789&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=rVxH5uzQTYJK6M%253A%252CiACLh9_Wn1hCCM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQdhRI4x0tdMzCPMATYk_rmRRJwuA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_lMvMzLflAhVFba0KHaS3DikQ9QEwBHoECAcQD A#

[imsorryGMs]

TLDR i have other shit posts to read. Don't be so selfish

[branamil]

You just typed a thesis on the integrity of a digitized elf land, reconsider your life choices

[Indicas]

You just typed a thesis on the integrity of a digitized elf land, reconsider your life choices
this made me laugh, not only that they created a new account just to do it, i mean i'm bored waiting on this to fire up but damn, thats a whole new level

[Honus]

Wall of text


Dude, lay off of the energy drinks.

[quido]

Get this man a diary for Christmas.

[Rang]

Jauna alt?

[bubur]

Hello all...

your first paragraph basically demonstrates why the staff is forced to rely on assumptions and take liberties when it makes these calls. its full of out-of-era references and guesses i'm assuming you're misremembering

brad may have been lucky or a genius with some of his design choices, who knows. but this current team has been working on the compilation of spaghetti that we call the classic code for 10 years now.

dont be concerned, just play and make bug reports and threads if you determine there are actual inconsistencies with your classic experience. post evidence, too

[eqgmrdbz]

It's when I see stuff like this that I realize I am not a true hardcore Everquest player, yikes!

[Immok]

I was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins" event, I was in the raid.

I too was there when Leeroy ran into Naggy's lair and trained all the giants around...

[aaezil]

OP is mad / sad / bad

And dude - most of us here are from classic or kunark era originally - you’re not special and nobody cares that you were lvl 50 30 years ago.

[Whirled]

Welcome back, but I gotta tell ya, not many are going to read all that. Hope your game goes well tho brother and be well

[DMN]

Read something about a little brother. Hope it was wholesome. Missed the rest.

[imsorryGMs]

Welcome back, but I gotta tell ya, not many are going to read all that. Hope your game goes well tho brother and be well

Your positivity makes me wanna puke!

[jakeojohnson]

Day one Wall of text. Brings a tear to my eyes.

huzzah!

[nilzark]

OP preaches truth. I hereby nominate him as 'Sage Priest of ForumQuest', and award him 50 exp points.

[Madbad]

Holy shit

[Videri]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Benanov]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too fucking wordy.

Then I attempted to read this, and failed.

[Fammaden]

Adderall is a helluva drug.

[imsorryGMs]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

This gave me a seizure.

[Bardp1999]

HopefulButConcerned101 Journal - Day 9

Today I have completed my manifesto and posted it to the P99 boards. I can only hope a single person reads my unreadable wall of nonsense I have posted about a 20 year old elf simulator. I like to jab pens into my groin to feel alive ahhh AHHHHH ahhhh AHHHHHhhhhhhhh

[Whirled]

Your positivity makes me wanna puke!

Why does it bother you so much?

[imsorryGMs]

Why does it bother you so much?

It doesn't. You just seem really nice esp to be in RnF

[Whirled]

Oooo, i get ya. I was just tryin to be neighborly to another player is all.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

mhmm.

That's why I visited the forum twice, spending about 2 hrs total on EQ since 2002, reading and typing out a lesson for you losers while you still play a game that died 20 years ago. You people are riding our coat tails. I am glad you smelled my fart=)

Project99, these are the people I am referring to, and this is why your project is a failure. But hey, keep pandering to the loser base.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

Yes, we were the original players. The first. I didn't do everything, but I did quite a bit. Friend of mine was the first to assemble the staff of the wheel. Friend of mine was the first to loot a weight reducing bag in high hold pass. Friend of mine was the first to get married in the game. Rival guild was the first to slay Lady Voxx. The first player to be pvp'ed was down the street from me. First person to kill the POD was in my guild. First person to make a guild I knew. First person to find the bone bladed claymore..

Etc.

We were original EQ, you are the guys wishing you were us.

Sorry)

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I didn't play wow much, I watched my little brother play it a bit though. game was for children and loser adults craving a real life.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I am wealthy and retired, you are still playing a game that died when I was a child. I'd say consider your own life)

[indiscriminate_hater]

- Makes fun of people playing a game 20 years old
- Brags about people he knew who did things 20 years ago in that game

Welcome! You will fit in well here

[HopefulButConcerned101]

It took me 1 minute to register, and 15 to type out my thoughts. Your the one still playing a dead game. How many hours a day?

lol@you guys.

We have fond memories, you grind for exp all day/

I've given you losers enough time. bye bye

[Rang]

*joker laugh* im sorry i have a condition

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I mean, the thread is titled "rants"
=)

[HopefulButConcerned101]

Hell, I had to reread it a few times to gain some actual nostalgia. Your "green" server has zero chance of providing it.

Nice try though.

[azeth]

I was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins" event, I was in the raid.

I didn't play wow much, I watched my little brother play it a bit though. game was for children and loser adults craving a real life.

So you're a liar? You know the Leroy Jenkins thing is from WOW, yea?

[Mblake81]

So you're a liar? You know the Leroy Jenkins thing is from WOW, yea?

Hes a 2019 account. At this point its a new player and will act accordingly or its a guy trying to be a digital hobbitsexual on a toss away account as blue is ending.

[Lhord99]

Leeroy Jenkins happened in WoW...

Maybe you filled that plot hole in appendix A(z) Subsection 101.23.f, but I didn’t get that far, as I had to finish wiping, check for Hershey evidence, then pull-Trou to go wash my hands, and then exit the bathroom.

[Arcticflava]

mhmm.

was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins"


Lol, thanks for stopping by to humiliate yourself.

[solleks]

Mental disorder

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I only played the game steady for 3 years, that is the era I played in. what "its full of out-of-era references" am I referring to? the sleeper event? like I said that was at the end of my play with this game, that last part from year 3-5 where I only played once a month, as the game slowly turned into something different. I was losing interest, and wasn't keyed into central themes anymore, this is why I said my memory starts to fail at this point.

[PieOats]

LORAMIN, PLEASE BAN INDICAS FOR FnCKING UP PAGE ONE (1) ☝️ of this terrible thread.


OP, SEEK CHRIST.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

also, they wasted their 10 yrs and I am telling you why, that's all. If they want us back, they need to refrain from changing anything, otherwise, as you can see, the green server is dead, in fact, most of eq is dead. You cant pander to the people who destroyed the game and expect the original players to return and you cant roll out the original version while changing only a few things to pander to the new base, you have disenfranchised both communities. After 10 yrs they are desperate, I just gave them the perspective of my community. I can make 3 phone calls, and send out a chain of emails and by next week have 10k people on that server. We were the team, we are still very social. my 100 friends, each of their 100 friends, and so no. but they didn't recreate original EQ, they have right off the rip altered the original starting zones by gimping the spawn rates. the first thing a player experiences, gimped. Noone wants to come back and sit around for spawns in a slow boring grind on orc hill. orc hill is just an example. I use it because I played mostly elves. it stands out in my memory. but it also effects every other starting area. I will jump on Eve with my 1500 player clan and raid an enemy before I reinstall EQ, free or not. because it is not EQ anymore. EQ was not duo box grinding in double exp zones to reach the top and chat all day while drone pulling. EQ was a nonstop fight for life, from level 1.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

no your not.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

chest pound=)

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I am not a player anymore, I stopped playing almost 2 decades ago. I was enlisted by my brother who is a player to speak on behalf of the original community. I was asked to rant, and my post isn't meant for you, its meant for these new devs. they are arguing over the lighting...it was dark because humans cant see I the dark, can you?

[HopefulButConcerned101]

no, I made a post pleading with the devs not to alter respawn times, and gave an in depth explanation as to why.

The rest is not attacking anyone, its defending myself.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

revisionist history.

"all your bases belong to me"

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I don't have a account. other than the boxing experiment my brother showed me, where I leveled an entire party to 60 in a 3 days, I haven't played eq in 20 years (thank god for pot, otherwise I wouldn't have made it past the tutorial stage). I came here, registered right quick and made my post. and judging by the community response, nothing has changed since we all left. which is why we wont be coming back, have fun power grinding to level 1000 in total disappointment.

[Bboboo]

biggus yikus

[HopefulButConcerned101]

if it happened in wow it was a recreation. I don't know about wow, it was a childs game with cartoon graphics, I didn't make it past stranglethorn forest before I quit gaming altogether, for a decade. Today I find myself reinstalling old games like command and conquer or half life, because what is out is so easy I can play blindfolded. a game is suppose to be challenging not a poorly written book with great graphics as I play through, like a round of golf.

[nectarprime]

autist

[Ruhtar]

Dont lower the spawn rates.
Create DM controlled events.
Dont punish Ksers, or trainers.
Dont block guilds from holding zones.

So...you wrote all of that because of spawn rates being lowered temporarily and you can't be a huge piece of shit in-game?

Grats

[Invalid_Bard]

A++

[Wonkie]

concerned eh? like a concern troll? that's wild

[Kayso2]

https://i.imgur.com/bjCyUwf.jpg

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I'll respond to myself. All I see are trolls. Dev's, continue to waste your time, its your time to waste. The original players have better things to do, you cant recreate the experience and all you have is anti-social trolls with no ability to play a challenging game. I commend your effort, I truly do, but were not coming back to these skilless trolls. The only way to get rid of them is to make the game hard again, which, apparently your not willing to do, and that's fine, adios=)

I spent enough time here, and to tell you the truth I did feel some nostalgia, the nostalgia of how the game ended...whining arse trolls. I do remember it, very well.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

idiot, did you not actually think about what I wrote? you skimmed it, with only the thought of trolling. looking for a reason to pounce, typical.

The DM's themselves caused trains. It was war. A train was a bunch of mobs pathing back and forth. We made guilds to deal with trains. Unrest was an example, but they did it everywhere that players liked. We liked lower guk, it had a huge population...a group or 2 per room, camping a single spawn. The better groups would hold rooms with 2-3, maybe 4 spawns. Then they would create some king level named whatever those things were, I cant remember all the names, and double the spawn rates and march through the halls as a train, and we either died, or we formed up together and fought them off. This is how we made teams, how we worked together. This is how guilds were made. its not the same as today, where you troll each other and form trolling guilds of like minded trolls, we guilded for safety and security, and to form groups. you could not join my guild for instance if you were level 40 with a swim skill of 15. We couldn't do the underwater raid near unrest.

Many times we had DM controlled trains in Cazic Thule. We had Dm's possessing greater wurms in skyfall? sky something, I cant remember, plane of sky? w/e, for the express purpose of forcing the necros to group. When someone yelled train, 90% of the time it was due to a bad pull, yelling train to zone meant help me!! and many times we did. sometimes succeeded, sometimes we failed, and sometimes we simply ran away. The few people who trained on purpose never made it past level 10, they had no friends, or they trained for a purpose, like clearing out a raid zone being camped by a large guild for several days at a time.

Actual ksers were rare, it was more of an accidental thing than anything else, very few people made it a point to KS, unless it was to cause a pvp fight. I KS'ed on the pvp server, my mage was a pvp mage. There was a 10 level difference for pking in pvp. so you would antagonize the lowbies by ksing them in order to force them to call for higher level help, higher level help you could now pvp against. it was a strategy to call them out, or get them out of a zone your guild wanted to raid.

Everything was strategy, that's my point. You guys are the pieces of shit that ruined the social atmosphere with constant finger pointing and whining. you were ksed for a reason, and were to stupid to know why, so rather than stand and fight you wrote a diatribe to the devs, who are now thinking only about money, and nerf something, or ban someone, or totally alter a game dynamic, as a result we now have garbage games to play. I truly think you should invest some time in "Rust"

on second thought, youll never get it, and I've grown bored trying to talk to you guys. play on server with 300 people and spend your days drone pulling. its your life, have fun.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I wrote it in hopes that these devs would truly consider what they said they wanted to do, and what they spent a decade trying to. because I would love to play the original eq again. but I cant, so time to move on again, it was a pleasure talking with your trolls again, later

[Ripqozko]

https://www.autismspeaks.org/

[Mead]

op sounds like he needs me to create him a diet and workout regimen

meet me in the gains thread

[NachtMystium]

One of the funniest/most bizarre threads and OP I’ve encountered in a while, thanks for the laugh mister True EQ veteran lmao

[nilzark]

One of the funniest/most bizarre threads and OP I’ve encountered in a while, thanks for the laugh mister True EQ veteran lmao

Yea, reminds me of the 'Harrison' days. Good stuff.

By the way, I just logged off Green. It took me about 4 hours to get to level 3, and that was about 2 hours with a group. 177 people were in Nektulos, 87 in EC, etc...

[kotton05]

Yikes

[aspomwell]

please don't ever let this thread end...

[Cecily]

Hello all,

I cant tell you how happy I am to see this project. My little brother told me about it a few months ago, as I havent looked at EQ in a long time. I'm ecstatic! ... but a little disappointed and concerned about some of the things I am reading. I hope the staff seriously considers my points.

First, I played EQ on day 1. I was the first Wizard to hit level 50 on my server, Fennin Ro, and I am the one who lost to Drakky in the arena with my wizard, and then pvp'ed him for a win with my Enchanter the next day. I was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins" event, I was in the raid. I was also the first person to challenge Fironia Vie, and die horribly at the gates of Felwithe while the DM controlled toon opened the new zone, Fironia Vie. Needless to say I am as old school as it gets. Forgive me, but we are talking something like 20 years ago and my memory is not perfect, going forward here. I had characters on several pve servers, I founded the guild, "Elven Royal guard." I had characters on the base pvp server, the race war pvp server and the alignment based pvp server (frakin newts!). two 50 Wizards, three 50 Enchanters, two 50 Necromancers, 50 Mage. As you can see I loved casters. I also soloed a paladin to 50 to prove a point (its not about being trained or ksed, its about being strategic, its not about spawn rates or being pl'ed, its about patience, thought, and tactics). ah, what was that awesome helm called...it had a heal spell, I cant remember, and of course a rubicite wearing 50 warrior, which they nerfed, along with all 3 of my chanters. lol. oh, and a 50 cleric. and a 50 druid. I was there when we freed the big dragon at the end, I was among the 10,000 corpses the first time we failed and she flew all over norrath killing everyone in every zone, regardless of level. Cant remember the dragons name, the sleeper? or nagafen? I think nagafen was in sol A?? I canna remember. I quit shortly after that, to many nerfs, to many whiners, game was not the same. So, my memory really fails at that point. oh lava duct crawlers! the coveted golden efreeti boots, nagafen was sol b?

Anyways, here goes....

What made original EQ awesome was not just the difficulty, it was the competition and the exploration. These 3 things played a pivotal role in the game, creating a realistic social atmosphere. But most of all, the DM interaction and events. I will give examples coming up, but first lets talk about spawn reduction. Being boxed in at the newbie zone and racial starting area was part of the game. This did a few things. You met lots of people, right off! It created a bond between the players starting in these zones. People fantasizing about being the good guy started as high elves or wood elves, they had like minds, saw the game and their role similarly, and the same went for people playing dark elves, they wanted to be evil, and had that same mentality. My favorite was Felwithe and Kelethin. The crushbone orcs and orc hill, especially on the pvp servers. I had more fun guarding orc hill with my 4th enchanter, keeping her at level 16, permanently, fighting against level 12 dark elf pk'ers, hunting newbs in crushbone on the pvp server in my guild, Royal elven guard, than anywhere else, or in any other game. You were crowded in and forced to be social, you had to either befriend people and join them, or make enemies and compete with them. Survival by natural selection, if you cant group, you will level slow and be left behind. This caused tension. Tension is social. You also memorized your zone, the spawns, the drops, etc, as you were stuck here for a bit, and it gave you time to learn before you reached higher levels, and a reason to start new characters of other races. Dying 50 times in the newb zone taught you how NOT to die in the higher level zones, where losing exp really hurt. That's why those punk snowflakes sucked so bad at level 50, they were PL'ed by wizards using ice comet, and had no idea how to use their character in a group. I had 3 enchanters BECAUSE I wanted to start in different areas, with different races. My elf Wizard was level 50 before I ever saw Paneel, I made my erudite, specifically to enjoy this area. I was a master player, and the highest level on my server (I am literally 1 of the first 10 people to ever hit level 50 in EQ), and had never seen that side of the world, it was almost like playing a new game. A loving high elf enchanter in felwithe, an evil dark elf mage in Nektolus, an arrogant erudite wizard in paneel, roleplay meant something, and is social. This also made you a guide to characters of other races, a reason to make friends as you all spread out from home, while keeping a level of loyalty to said starting zone (role- players/ remember the purple tag?). It was also part of the difficulty. Fast spawns effected how you pulled, when you pulled and where you pulled to. You could get really messed up in that forest fort with the giants, they spawned so fast. It was part of the calculation when pulling, and part of the crowding. Competing for camps was an issue, and remember every issue becomes a social event. "Train to zone" was a common occurrence, and players had to learn how to cope with it. Not standing in the middle of the road in front of the zone, thinking you were safe to med up. Fear of death ment something, it was the core of the game, dying and losing 2 days of experience was a nightmare, and made you play better. Made you think, made you work as a teammate far better. I built social bonds with many people. I became famous, because I guarded the zone entrances with my enchanter, dropping an area mesmerize, and then a mem blur on entire trains, saving countless lives. Karnors keep, the left side for zoning in the right side for zoning out, that was all me, because I guarded the entrance with mesmerization to stop trains for my guild as they held the keep. I got into so many groups and made so many friends, just because of that. The games today suck, you just respawn, no harm no foul. That is a joke to a serious EQ player back in the day. Dying was punishment, dont die! Play smart. There was no safe place. The mobs were abundant, spawning everywhere and walking around, pathing everywhere. It took sometimes hours to find what you thought was a safe pulling point. There was no safe place, the game was not designed to be a solo game. Shamans were not making SoW potions so people could run across norrath, only the poor and those who sucked did that, everyone else took a port. Shamans sold sow pots so you could navigate the wild areas, due to nonstop respawns and pathing. A way to escape death, train to zone! These are the tactics the original programmers used to force social interaction. Reducing spawn rates gives Necros and Mages complete dominance over the zone (this is exactly why everyone today thinks they are OP). Fear kiting was dangerous, you never knew when your target would walk into the path of another mob. Killing the mob fast was the mages thing, if he didnt, the mob would spawn again right on top of his rooted enemy, we called them adds, and this is why enchanters were important. You negate the purpose of the enchanter if there is no threat of nonstop adds. And then of course there are pvp players. Sneaking into your racial, or alignment enemies newb zones was fantastic fun. If you were spotted, they would be yelling your location out in the zone. What made sneaking hard was a multitude of invis seeing undead, respawning and walking everywhere. Chanters turning into trees to avoid being seen by the newb party and then having to slowly crawl away without them noticing the tree was moving, so you could invis undead before that random skele crossed your path, you see him coming!!! You cant get into the dark elf city to hunt lower level guards if you cant get pass the high level gate guards. This is WHY level 1 skeles were everywhere in newb zones. This is why they had a spawn rate of 30 seconds, and this is why they had agro toward any level. You have taken a major part of the social interaction out of the game, and lowered the difficulty bar tremendously by reducing spawn rates. Your not going to attract the original player base by pandering to the very people who couldn't handle this type of higher level game play that led to the fall of EQ and the rise of garbage like WoW. The precedent today is how easy can we make it. Original EQ was not children, it was young adults looking for a challenging environment. You cannot release something called original EQ, and right off the rip nerf the starting zones. That initial struggle MATTERS, and sets the stage for the rest of the game.

Exploration was a big deal. Slowly, advancing from zone to zone, with the tension of imminent death looming over your head while you searched for a new place to hunt in at your level was surreal. Higher level mobs, stalking you as you traversed the wild. Trying to avoid being spotted while they pathed everywhere. I dont see how you can avoid removing this, as everyone playing knows the world, and is just recreating a character, but possibly finding a way to move some things would be nice. I remember stumbling upon a cave, hidden in a forest under some brush. It was a whole zone! noone even heard of it....the place with all the giant floating sperm cells. I cant remember the name. what a laugh though.

Kill stealing..everyone hated it. but it was part of the social atmosphere. You did not want to solo as a tank when a mage could come along and one shot your kill to finish him off and grab the experience, infuriating!! but this caused warriors to find groups. Now we have a reason for the cleric. Instead of warriors sitting forever, they are looking for that cleric buddy, a big part of EQ was warriors and clerics learning how to support each other. Warriors learning to protect the cleric even if everyone else in the group dies. The cleric can res, and only he can (there were very few paladins I my time). That bond mattered at high levels, it mattered in raids, it created friends, and in the KSer's case, enemies. Everything that forced the group ... removed the solo player. If you want an easy solo play, then we have Skyrim. EQ was a group game. KSing revealed a characters personality, you knew that Gergeo375 was a bad guy, he is known for ksing. You now know that he will grab the rare loot w/o the groups consent soon as the mob falls. Bad guys matter, they are part of the real social environment. There were parties specifically designed to punk a solo mage kser. I made a Mage specifically to KS (an evil dark elf mage, so acted evil). It was my mission with that mage. I had fun searching for parties I could KS, and they had fun trying to stop me. I made enemies with that mage too. I was hated on that server, HATED. But that was part of it. My enchanter was loved, famous, and sought out by everyone. I logged in with my enchanter and immediately received 100 tells with people wanting to me join them, even begging me. I logged in with my Mage on a different server and immediately received 100s of tells with people hunting me. I had bounty's placed on my head. People trying to train me, looking for me, finding me, waiting patiently for me to engage something, and then dragging a train on me. All, more social interaction. More comradery. Better teams. More fun. The bad guys give the good guys a reason to team up, otherwise they are sitting by themselves bored. Grinding, grinding, grinding. Then that kser hits them a few times, now we have a party, a party searching for a mage in an forest infested with giant wasps, that respawn every 30 seconds, and path everywhere. They are locked in nonstop combat looking for the boss mob, that fricken ksing mage! and when they find him, the thrill of the fight is amazing. and look, they jumped 2 levels in the process of being in a group. 6 hrs went by and noone realized it. Shat man, I got to go to work! (I realize that's predominately a pvp server thing/but it was also when players chose to be pvp on pve servers, when they engaged pvp they became pvp with him, also nerfed though)but nothing beats the NICE cleric, if you run a nice cleric, not a prick who thinks you owe him, you are god in original EQ. log in, crash, log in crash, log in, only 500 tells this time. ehehe

Controlling raid zones and high level zones was part of the guild dynamic. SON, seekers of norrath, was famous for owning the outer plane zones on my main server. You either joined them (more social interaction) or you joined someone else to compete with them (more social interaction) or made some kind of treaty, or bargain with them to hunt there. or 5 smaller guilds banded together and raided SON first, then the held the zone. On the pvp server, this led to wars, which is the point of pvp. We had wars of 100 vs 100 that sometimes got so out of hand the server would crash. Wars... this also goes to the DM interaction. I cant remember the name of the forest, it was above the halfling city. It was basically a good zone, lighted nicely, and low level. The DM's held an event where they raided half the countryside with mid to high level undead, several of which were named 50+ level undead kings (DM controlled) and half of the server population participated. We were on the phones calling people to get on their character and help us!! People called out of work, or left early to get in on this giant war with the DM undead army. This is why EQ was called EVERCRACK. When it was done and said, we lost, the people of norrath lost, and that zone was forever changed to a dark forest, filled with high level undead (kithicor, yes?). It had an actual game changing effect. At that point, we never knew wth the DM's would do. Guilds really mean something now. You wanted to be part of a guild so you could deal with DM's raids against your zones. Zones started to become "yours." Bixbie invasions, giant bee things with human heads were hell, and helluva fun. DM's taking control of the festering hags in Unrest was the greatest fun. I see you guys talking about not wanting trains. Banning people for training. In the original EQ, the vanilla version that you want to simulate here, the DM's themselves deliberately created trains and ran the entire population right out of Unrest. Train to zone!!! A DM created train. We had to form up in groups and go in with a strategy to overcome being wiped from a festering hags train (high levels guarding low levels) and that fricken giant hand!! the god DM. we would bond together, 3 or 4 major guilds and come running to kill that train and reclaim Unrest. 15 hours to organize and execute. Again, social interaction. There will be nothing nostalgic about vanilla EQ w/o DM interaction. It'll be a game with poor graphics and alot of stress that holds the attention of only a few die hard players. It wont take long before they go back to their established characters, guilds, and friends, on w/e server they are currently playing on. I will not come back to play a 20 year old game with Nintendo level graphics, w/o the DM interaction, w/o the trains, and w/o the nonstop frenzy spawning and pathing. It wont be hard, it will be boring. Nostalgia will not be there, its not the same game. Anti-socializing is what killed EQ to begin with. I started a character not to long ago, to play with my little brother. Everyone is soloing with a merc, double or triple boxing multiple characters and there is very little social interaction. Lots of talk maybe, but not interaction with their toons in the fight against mobs and each other. It reminds me of an old AOL chat room. If the community is begging for original EQ then you need to give them original EQ, not just another server that completely misses the point of original EQ, which was, again, social interaction, TEAMS. These level 85 SK's I was shown, this is a whole different game now, what they call EQ now, is totally different. Guy running through a zone pulling 100 mobs and killing them all with an aoe is retarded. I mean these are blue cons, in my day it took a group to kill a single blue con, or a well armed twink and his cleric buddy, unless you wanted 5 minutes of downtime after every fight. Why not play diablo? that is not EQ, what I was shown is a far cry from original EQ. Minimizing my screen to switch characters spell or action after spell or action, the strategy being the best combo of spells, never the best teamwork. If these guys want Original EQ, then understand most of old EQ was outside. Was trains, ksing, and running for your life due to nonstop spawning. Learning, planning, and executing a strategy to pull safely to the place your team called "camp" Only necros soloed, and 50% of the time they were begging to join soemones group. They remade the necro and gave him all this mana swapping crap specifically so he could group, because even the solo class itself, couldnt really solo. and that was the first major unbalance of the game.

The horror show of difficulty WAS original EQ. Corpse running, paying a cleric 200 plat for a 90% rez. Renting a necro to grab your corpse and drag it from harm, or negotiating with a guild, yours or someone elses to fight their way to the bottom of Sol B for a corpse retrieval, a 6 hour fight, a quest, a player created quest. A guild of 30, 8 of them dying en route to your corpse, more corpse runs, everyone stressed, and then the final satisfaction of retrieval. Paying wizards for teleports to keep from running for 3 hours across the plains. Negotiations, friends, deals, enemies, all part of the social interaction. Enchanters mezzing entire parties in pvp, charming the wizard and setting him against the cleric, then re-messing, and wiping the melee one at a time (also nerfed). 1 guy takes all 6 of you out, while you rant at each other in chat about it! or you resist that mes! and the chanter is running for dear life, the exhilaration of rooting him and killing him! the REVENGE!!! nothing feels better. That heart pumping, "I'm gonna get that guy!" every class had a niche it could fill, and w/o each other we were screwed. Necros holding entire camps, Mage KSers, Wizard robberbarrons, Enchanter warmongers, Druid lifesavers, the ever elusive cleric, the struggling paladin, the sucky warrior who suddenly becomes the key to everything high level, the tricky rogue, the rich shaman, etc. You take away the bad stuff and the good stuff is meaningless.

The stress, and tension made EQ famous. The complaints of the snowflakes killed it. "why cant I spawn with my armor on?" because dying is punishment.
"why did I lose all my experience when I died" because dying is punishment
"They spawn to fast, its to hard to pull" Then practice, and learn, get innovative
"what does pulling mean?" pfft

"why do all the players suck?" because there is no consequence for being stupid.

Dont lower the spawn rates.
Create DM controlled events.
Dont punish Ksers, or trainers.
Dont block guilds from holding zones.
That is vanilla EQ.

Deepwater helm? was that it? the solo paladins dream, oh and a shiny new mithril 2hander with a hand me down fbss

that is old school EQ.

Twinks. The beloved twink in your group, who can hold that horde of bandits long enough to pull that TRAIN TO ZONE.

NOOOO! I died right as I zoned and my body collapsed on the other side of the wall!!

cry...

That is old school EQ.

Its the emotion. I can only think of 2 other games that had it in the last 30 years. Eve online, and Rust.

The new players are hearing from the old players how cool the game was. You yourself must remember it or you wouldn't be doing this project. Keep the emotion in the game. Keep the hate and the anger. Its what drives us. The frustration is what gives the feeling of satisfaction. Your newbie EQ players, and yea almost all of you are newbies to us, are already complaining about the very things that were taken out and ruined the game. It wasn't luclin that ruined EQ, it was the whiners. It got boring and then WOW stole the show. Then they did it to wow, and wow sucked and now everyone is scattered amongst 50 crap wannabee MMO's all dreaming of original EQ.

I pray you reconsider adjusting the spawn rates, that one thing will bring me back. Brad was the genius, not you. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Follow his model.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

now that's interesting, I may check it out. last I looked the server had a pop of 400, the whole server. ill give it to next weekend, if there are 100 people in each newb zone, allday long ...ill eat my words.

[Wonkie]

Dangit. I afked on green and ate all my food/drink. Guess I'll starve.

[aaezil]

Is he like triple posting then responding to himself? Wowowow

[Madbad]

Fucking adderall

[Chortles Snort|eS]

always suspected DMs took over mobs and ran a campaign in the midst of a smooth XP grind

adds flavor to da game even if ends in death

[Ennewi]

That first post is about as reader-friendly as classic was player-friendly. Though my own post history suggests otherwise, there is something to be said for brevity.

[Tethler]

Lmao, what a trainwreck of a thread. Is this a Zuranthium reroll?

[Wonkie]

Lmao, what a trainwreck of a thread. Is this a Zuranthium reroll?

Zuranthium tried to kill me on red but I was like "hey knock it off" and he gave up

[HopefulButConcerned101]

who are you then? what was your characters name, what guild were we in? because we know each if that is the case)

[HopefulButConcerned101]

and there are no giants in naggys layer that I remember, unless you mean efreetis? it was a long time ago though

[HopefulButConcerned101]

I didn't give my characters and levels to impress anyone, it was to reveal that I was a hard core player that put a lot of time in the game, I wasn't casual. I have a lot of experience with original eq, very little with what they call eq today. I could not speak to you about todays eq. but you cannot speak to me about yesterdays.

[Tethler]

and there are no giants in naggys layer that I remember, unless you mean efreetis? it was a long time ago though

Stop now while you're behind

[Mead]

and there are no giants in naggys layer that I remember, unless you mean efreetis? it was a long time ago though

Over a dozen giants on the way, potentially 3 inside of his actual room

lol

[Cecily]

Yeah OP, it's totally safe

[Canelek]

This is a AAA thread.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

dude, I truly hope they succeeded, Im trying to install it all right now, I know that was a rant, and I cant remember all the details, its hard arguing with guys who still play, and have been nonstop for 20 years, I just don't want them to start the nerfing crap right off. I have a feeling its going to be a few thousand people who will race to 50, and then the rest of the game is dead. I like level 1, and 2 and 3, etc. not just 50, 50 is where it started to suck, that's when we were just grinding the same mobs and same thing over and over again to get some rare item. and w/o the dm events the high level loses flavor rapidly.

but this page is for rants)

[nectarprime]

I didn't give my characters and levels to impress anyone, it was to reveal that I was a hard core player that put a lot of time in the game, I wasn't casual. I have a lot of experience with original eq, very little with what they call eq today. I could not speak to you about todays eq. but you cannot speak to me about yesterdays.

You're an idiot and a liar.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

haha, yes I got that) but im actually installing now, so ill rant with the sharks for a few. and im already seeing them complain in other threads about levelling slow and quests. this is good news to me, maybe the old crowd will be on this green server, I just hope its enough people to actually have the game, and not a jump into guild and power grind to 50 because all the zones will be empty next month and everyone Is camping lower guk or naggy. itwont be successful if its a mere 2000 players, they would have to constantly be making new characters, all of them otherwise all the zones will be barren of players real soon, and soloing old eq is not fun.

[AgentEpilot]

Jesus Christ how much adderall did you snort, you're also trying to claim glory for pixels, no one gives a shit.

[matticas]

You just typed a thesis on the integrity of a digitized elf land, reconsider your life choices

laughed pretty hard

[Lordgordon]

I agree with what i read

[Eslade]

I like this guy

[Fammaden]

I will invite you to my guild OP, its going to be one of the biggest. Send tell to Monrezzsux in game if you see me online.

[BlackBellamy]

This is definitely worse than that sniper confirmed kills copypasta and also the wresting one with the guy in the cage or whatever.

[Nirgon]

Hello all,

I cant tell you how happy I am to see this project. My little brother told me about it a few months ago, as I havent looked at EQ in a long time. I'm ecstatic! ... but a little disappointed and concerned about some of the things I am reading. I hope the staff seriously considers my points.

First, I played EQ on day 1. I was the first Wizard to hit level 50 on my server, Fennin Ro, and I am the one who lost to Drakky in the arena with my wizard, and then pvp'ed him for a win with my Enchanter the next day. I was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins" event, I was in the raid. I was also the first person to challenge Fironia Vie, and die horribly at the gates of Felwithe while the DM controlled toon opened the new zone, Fironia Vie. Needless to say I am as old school as it gets. Forgive me, but we are talking something like 20 years ago and my memory is not perfect, going forward here. I had characters on several pve servers, I founded the guild, "Elven Royal guard." I had characters on the base pvp server, the race war pvp server and the alignment based pvp server (frakin newts!). two 50 Wizards, three 50 Enchanters, two 50 Necromancers, 50 Mage. As you can see I loved casters. I also soloed a paladin to 50 to prove a point (its not about being trained or ksed, its about being strategic, its not about spawn rates or being pl'ed, its about patience, thought, and tactics). ah, what was that awesome helm called...it had a heal spell, I cant remember, and of course a rubicite wearing 50 warrior, which they nerfed, along with all 3 of my chanters. lol. oh, and a 50 cleric. and a 50 druid. I was there when we freed the big dragon at the end, I was among the 10,000 corpses the first time we failed and she flew all over norrath killing everyone in every zone, regardless of level. Cant remember the dragons name, the sleeper? or nagafen? I think nagafen was in sol A?? I canna remember. I quit shortly after that, to many nerfs, to many whiners, game was not the same. So, my memory really fails at that point. oh lava duct crawlers! the coveted golden efreeti boots, nagafen was sol b?

Anyways, here goes....

What made original EQ awesome was not just the difficulty, it was the competition and the exploration. These 3 things played a pivotal role in the game, creating a realistic social atmosphere. But most of all, the DM interaction and events. I will give examples coming up, but first lets talk about spawn reduction. Being boxed in at the newbie zone and racial starting area was part of the game. This did a few things. You met lots of people, right off! It created a bond between the players starting in these zones. People fantasizing about being the good guy started as high elves or wood elves, they had like minds, saw the game and their role similarly, and the same went for people playing dark elves, they wanted to be evil, and had that same mentality. My favorite was Felwithe and Kelethin. The crushbone orcs and orc hill, especially on the pvp servers. I had more fun guarding orc hill with my 4th enchanter, keeping her at level 16, permanently, fighting against level 12 dark elf pk'ers, hunting newbs in crushbone on the pvp server in my guild, Royal elven guard, than anywhere else, or in any other game. You were crowded in and forced to be social, you had to either befriend people and join them, or make enemies and compete with them. Survival by natural selection, if you cant group, you will level slow and be left behind. This caused tension. Tension is social. You also memorized your zone, the spawns, the drops, etc, as you were stuck here for a bit, and it gave you time to learn before you reached higher levels, and a reason to start new characters of other races. Dying 50 times in the newb zone taught you how NOT to die in the higher level zones, where losing exp really hurt. That's why those punk snowflakes sucked so bad at level 50, they were PL'ed by wizards using ice comet, and had no idea how to use their character in a group. I had 3 enchanters BECAUSE I wanted to start in different areas, with different races. My elf Wizard was level 50 before I ever saw Paneel, I made my erudite, specifically to enjoy this area. I was a master player, and the highest level on my server (I am literally 1 of the first 10 people to ever hit level 50 in EQ), and had never seen that side of the world, it was almost like playing a new game. A loving high elf enchanter in felwithe, an evil dark elf mage in Nektolus, an arrogant erudite wizard in paneel, roleplay meant something, and is social. This also made you a guide to characters of other races, a reason to make friends as you all spread out from home, while keeping a level of loyalty to said starting zone (role- players/ remember the purple tag?). It was also part of the difficulty. Fast spawns effected how you pulled, when you pulled and where you pulled to. You could get really messed up in that forest fort with the giants, they spawned so fast. It was part of the calculation when pulling, and part of the crowding. Competing for camps was an issue, and remember every issue becomes a social event. "Train to zone" was a common occurrence, and players had to learn how to cope with it. Not standing in the middle of the road in front of the zone, thinking you were safe to med up. Fear of death ment something, it was the core of the game, dying and losing 2 days of experience was a nightmare, and made you play better. Made you think, made you work as a teammate far better. I built social bonds with many people. I became famous, because I guarded the zone entrances with my enchanter, dropping an area mesmerize, and then a mem blur on entire trains, saving countless lives. Karnors keep, the left side for zoning in the right side for zoning out, that was all me, because I guarded the entrance with mesmerization to stop trains for my guild as they held the keep. I got into so many groups and made so many friends, just because of that. The games today suck, you just respawn, no harm no foul. That is a joke to a serious EQ player back in the day. Dying was punishment, dont die! Play smart. There was no safe place. The mobs were abundant, spawning everywhere and walking around, pathing everywhere. It took sometimes hours to find what you thought was a safe pulling point. There was no safe place, the game was not designed to be a solo game. Shamans were not making SoW potions so people could run across norrath, only the poor and those who sucked did that, everyone else took a port. Shamans sold sow pots so you could navigate the wild areas, due to nonstop respawns and pathing. A way to escape death, train to zone! These are the tactics the original programmers used to force social interaction. Reducing spawn rates gives Necros and Mages complete dominance over the zone (this is exactly why everyone today thinks they are OP). Fear kiting was dangerous, you never knew when your target would walk into the path of another mob. Killing the mob fast was the mages thing, if he didnt, the mob would spawn again right on top of his rooted enemy, we called them adds, and this is why enchanters were important. You negate the purpose of the enchanter if there is no threat of nonstop adds. And then of course there are pvp players. Sneaking into your racial, or alignment enemies newb zones was fantastic fun. If you were spotted, they would be yelling your location out in the zone. What made sneaking hard was a multitude of invis seeing undead, respawning and walking everywhere. Chanters turning into trees to avoid being seen by the newb party and then having to slowly crawl away without them noticing the tree was moving, so you could invis undead before that random skele crossed your path, you see him coming!!! You cant get into the dark elf city to hunt lower level guards if you cant get pass the high level gate guards. This is WHY level 1 skeles were everywhere in newb zones. This is why they had a spawn rate of 30 seconds, and this is why they had agro toward any level. You have taken a major part of the social interaction out of the game, and lowered the difficulty bar tremendously by reducing spawn rates. Your not going to attract the original player base by pandering to the very people who couldn't handle this type of higher level game play that led to the fall of EQ and the rise of garbage like WoW. The precedent today is how easy can we make it. Original EQ was not children, it was young adults looking for a challenging environment. You cannot release something called original EQ, and right off the rip nerf the starting zones. That initial struggle MATTERS, and sets the stage for the rest of the game.

Exploration was a big deal. Slowly, advancing from zone to zone, with the tension of imminent death looming over your head while you searched for a new place to hunt in at your level was surreal. Higher level mobs, stalking you as you traversed the wild. Trying to avoid being spotted while they pathed everywhere. I dont see how you can avoid removing this, as everyone playing knows the world, and is just recreating a character, but possibly finding a way to move some things would be nice. I remember stumbling upon a cave, hidden in a forest under some brush. It was a whole zone! noone even heard of it....the place with all the giant floating sperm cells. I cant remember the name. what a laugh though.

Kill stealing..everyone hated it. but it was part of the social atmosphere. You did not want to solo as a tank when a mage could come along and one shot your kill to finish him off and grab the experience, infuriating!! but this caused warriors to find groups. Now we have a reason for the cleric. Instead of warriors sitting forever, they are looking for that cleric buddy, a big part of EQ was warriors and clerics learning how to support each other. Warriors learning to protect the cleric even if everyone else in the group dies. The cleric can res, and only he can (there were very few paladins I my time). That bond mattered at high levels, it mattered in raids, it created friends, and in the KSer's case, enemies. Everything that forced the group ... removed the solo player. If you want an easy solo play, then we have Skyrim. EQ was a group game. KSing revealed a characters personality, you knew that Gergeo375 was a bad guy, he is known for ksing. You now know that he will grab the rare loot w/o the groups consent soon as the mob falls. Bad guys matter, they are part of the real social environment. There were parties specifically designed to punk a solo mage kser. I made a Mage specifically to KS (an evil dark elf mage, so acted evil). It was my mission with that mage. I had fun searching for parties I could KS, and they had fun trying to stop me. I made enemies with that mage too. I was hated on that server, HATED. But that was part of it. My enchanter was loved, famous, and sought out by everyone. I logged in with my enchanter and immediately received 100 tells with people wanting to me join them, even begging me. I logged in with my Mage on a different server and immediately received 100s of tells with people hunting me. I had bounty's placed on my head. People trying to train me, looking for me, finding me, waiting patiently for me to engage something, and then dragging a train on me. All, more social interaction. More comradery. Better teams. More fun. The bad guys give the good guys a reason to team up, otherwise they are sitting by themselves bored. Grinding, grinding, grinding. Then that kser hits them a few times, now we have a party, a party searching for a mage in an forest infested with giant wasps, that respawn every 30 seconds, and path everywhere. They are locked in nonstop combat looking for the boss mob, that fricken ksing mage! and when they find him, the thrill of the fight is amazing. and look, they jumped 2 levels in the process of being in a group. 6 hrs went by and noone realized it. Shat man, I got to go to work! (I realize that's predominately a pvp server thing/but it was also when players chose to be pvp on pve servers, when they engaged pvp they became pvp with him, also nerfed though)but nothing beats the NICE cleric, if you run a nice cleric, not a prick who thinks you owe him, you are god in original EQ. log in, crash, log in crash, log in, only 500 tells this time. ehehe

Controlling raid zones and high level zones was part of the guild dynamic. SON, seekers of norrath, was famous for owning the outer plane zones on my main server. You either joined them (more social interaction) or you joined someone else to compete with them (more social interaction) or made some kind of treaty, or bargain with them to hunt there. or 5 smaller guilds banded together and raided SON first, then the held the zone. On the pvp server, this led to wars, which is the point of pvp. We had wars of 100 vs 100 that sometimes got so out of hand the server would crash. Wars... this also goes to the DM interaction. I cant remember the name of the forest, it was above the halfling city. It was basically a good zone, lighted nicely, and low level. The DM's held an event where they raided half the countryside with mid to high level undead, several of which were named 50+ level undead kings (DM controlled) and half of the server population participated. We were on the phones calling people to get on their character and help us!! People called out of work, or left early to get in on this giant war with the DM undead army. This is why EQ was called EVERCRACK. When it was done and said, we lost, the people of norrath lost, and that zone was forever changed to a dark forest, filled with high level undead (kithicor, yes?). It had an actual game changing effect. At that point, we never knew wth the DM's would do. Guilds really mean something now. You wanted to be part of a guild so you could deal with DM's raids against your zones. Zones started to become "yours." Bixbie invasions, giant bee things with human heads were hell, and helluva fun. DM's taking control of the festering hags in Unrest was the greatest fun. I see you guys talking about not wanting trains. Banning people for training. In the original EQ, the vanilla version that you want to simulate here, the DM's themselves deliberately created trains and ran the entire population right out of Unrest. Train to zone!!! A DM created train. We had to form up in groups and go in with a strategy to overcome being wiped from a festering hags train (high levels guarding low levels) and that fricken giant hand!! the god DM. we would bond together, 3 or 4 major guilds and come running to kill that train and reclaim Unrest. 15 hours to organize and execute. Again, social interaction. There will be nothing nostalgic about vanilla EQ w/o DM interaction. It'll be a game with poor graphics and alot of stress that holds the attention of only a few die hard players. It wont take long before they go back to their established characters, guilds, and friends, on w/e server they are currently playing on. I will not come back to play a 20 year old game with Nintendo level graphics, w/o the DM interaction, w/o the trains, and w/o the nonstop frenzy spawning and pathing. It wont be hard, it will be boring. Nostalgia will not be there, its not the same game. Anti-socializing is what killed EQ to begin with. I started a character not to long ago, to play with my little brother. Everyone is soloing with a merc, double or triple boxing multiple characters and there is very little social interaction. Lots of talk maybe, but not interaction with their toons in the fight against mobs and each other. It reminds me of an old AOL chat room. If the community is begging for original EQ then you need to give them original EQ, not just another server that completely misses the point of original EQ, which was, again, social interaction, TEAMS. These level 85 SK's I was shown, this is a whole different game now, what they call EQ now, is totally different. Guy running through a zone pulling 100 mobs and killing them all with an aoe is retarded. I mean these are blue cons, in my day it took a group to kill a single blue con, or a well armed twink and his cleric buddy, unless you wanted 5 minutes of downtime after every fight. Why not play diablo? that is not EQ, what I was shown is a far cry from original EQ. Minimizing my screen to switch characters spell or action after spell or action, the strategy being the best combo of spells, never the best teamwork. If these guys want Original EQ, then understand most of old EQ was outside. Was trains, ksing, and running for your life due to nonstop spawning. Learning, planning, and executing a strategy to pull safely to the place your team called "camp" Only necros soloed, and 50% of the time they were begging to join soemones group. They remade the necro and gave him all this mana swapping crap specifically so he could group, because even the solo class itself, couldnt really solo. and that was the first major unbalance of the game.

The horror show of difficulty WAS original EQ. Corpse running, paying a cleric 200 plat for a 90% rez. Renting a necro to grab your corpse and drag it from harm, or negotiating with a guild, yours or someone elses to fight their way to the bottom of Sol B for a corpse retrieval, a 6 hour fight, a quest, a player created quest. A guild of 30, 8 of them dying en route to your corpse, more corpse runs, everyone stressed, and then the final satisfaction of retrieval. Paying wizards for teleports to keep from running for 3 hours across the plains. Negotiations, friends, deals, enemies, all part of the social interaction. Enchanters mezzing entire parties in pvp, charming the wizard and setting him against the cleric, then re-messing, and wiping the melee one at a time (also nerfed). 1 guy takes all 6 of you out, while you rant at each other in chat about it! or you resist that mes! and the chanter is running for dear life, the exhilaration of rooting him and killing him! the REVENGE!!! nothing feels better. That heart pumping, "I'm gonna get that guy!" every class had a niche it could fill, and w/o each other we were screwed. Necros holding entire camps, Mage KSers, Wizard robberbarrons, Enchanter warmongers, Druid lifesavers, the ever elusive cleric, the struggling paladin, the sucky warrior who suddenly becomes the key to everything high level, the tricky rogue, the rich shaman, etc. You take away the bad stuff and the good stuff is meaningless.

The stress, and tension made EQ famous. The complaints of the snowflakes killed it. "why cant I spawn with my armor on?" because dying is punishment.
"why did I lose all my experience when I died" because dying is punishment
"They spawn to fast, its to hard to pull" Then practice, and learn, get innovative
"what does pulling mean?" pfft

"why do all the players suck?" because there is no consequence for being stupid.

Dont lower the spawn rates.
Create DM controlled events.
Dont punish Ksers, or trainers.
Dont block guilds from holding zones.
That is vanilla EQ.

Deepwater helm? was that it? the solo paladins dream, oh and a shiny new mithril 2hander with a hand me down fbss

that is old school EQ.

Twinks. The beloved twink in your group, who can hold that horde of bandits long enough to pull that TRAIN TO ZONE.

NOOOO! I died right as I zoned and my body collapsed on the other side of the wall!!

cry...

That is old school EQ.

Its the emotion. I can only think of 2 other games that had it in the last 30 years. Eve online, and Rust.

The new players are hearing from the old players how cool the game was. You yourself must remember it or you wouldn't be doing this project. Keep the emotion in the game. Keep the hate and the anger. Its what drives us. The frustration is what gives the feeling of satisfaction. Your newbie EQ players, and yea almost all of you are newbies to us, are already complaining about the very things that were taken out and ruined the game. It wasn't luclin that ruined EQ, it was the whiners. It got boring and then WOW stole the show. Then they did it to wow, and wow sucked and now everyone is scattered amongst 50 crap wannabee MMO's all dreaming of original EQ.

I pray you reconsider adjusting the spawn rates, that one thing will bring me back. Brad was the genius, not you. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Follow his model.

https://i.imgur.com/cm4VRmK.png

[bubur]

now that's interesting, I may check it out. last I looked the server had a pop of 400, the whole server. ill give it to next weekend, if there are 100 people in each newb zone, allday long ...ill eat my words.

welp hope you're hungry cuz that's a whole lot of words

[HopefulButConcerned101]

well, I downloaded and played last night, and will play allday today, so far, its awesome. But we will see in 2 months. from what I am reading here, and seeing in game chat, that blue and red server need to come down. otherwise, most of this pop and their alts will be level 50 by December, doing the same thing, getting bored and going back to their established toons. I mean I actually complained about the nonstop rain last night, 5 hours of rain...and got frustrated at the training newbs in CB...but THAT is EQ.

that frustration is why I will play today.

[Topgunben]

Hello all,

I cant tell you how happy I am to see this project. My little brother told me about it a few months ago, as I havent looked at EQ in a long time. I'm ecstatic! ... but a little disappointed and concerned about some of the things I am reading. I hope the staff seriously considers my points.

First, I played EQ on day 1. I was the first Wizard to hit level 50 on my server, Fennin Ro, and I am the one who lost to Drakky in the arena with my wizard, and then pvp'ed him for a win with my Enchanter the next day. I was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins" event, I was in the raid. I was also the first person to challenge Fironia Vie, and die horribly at the gates of Felwithe while the DM controlled toon opened the new zone, Fironia Vie. Needless to say I am as old school as it gets. Forgive me, but we are talking something like 20 years ago and my memory is not perfect, going forward here. I had characters on several pve servers, I founded the guild, "Elven Royal guard." I had characters on the base pvp server, the race war pvp server and the alignment based pvp server (frakin newts!). two 50 Wizards, three 50 Enchanters, two 50 Necromancers, 50 Mage. As you can see I loved casters. I also soloed a paladin to 50 to prove a point (its not about being trained or ksed, its about being strategic, its not about spawn rates or being pl'ed, its about patience, thought, and tactics). ah, what was that awesome helm called...it had a heal spell, I cant remember, and of course a rubicite wearing 50 warrior, which they nerfed, along with all 3 of my chanters. lol. oh, and a 50 cleric. and a 50 druid. I was there when we freed the big dragon at the end, I was among the 10,000 corpses the first time we failed and she flew all over norrath killing everyone in every zone, regardless of level. Cant remember the dragons name, the sleeper? or nagafen? I think nagafen was in sol A?? I canna remember. I quit shortly after that, to many nerfs, to many whiners, game was not the same. So, my memory really fails at that point. oh lava duct crawlers! the coveted golden efreeti boots, nagafen was sol b?

Anyways, here goes....

What made original EQ awesome was not just the difficulty, it was the competition and the exploration. These 3 things played a pivotal role in the game, creating a realistic social atmosphere. But most of all, the DM interaction and events. I will give examples coming up, but first lets talk about spawn reduction. Being boxed in at the newbie zone and racial starting area was part of the game. This did a few things. You met lots of people, right off! It created a bond between the players starting in these zones. People fantasizing about being the good guy started as high elves or wood elves, they had like minds, saw the game and their role similarly, and the same went for people playing dark elves, they wanted to be evil, and had that same mentality. My favorite was Felwithe and Kelethin. The crushbone orcs and orc hill, especially on the pvp servers. I had more fun guarding orc hill with my 4th enchanter, keeping her at level 16, permanently, fighting against level 12 dark elf pk'ers, hunting newbs in crushbone on the pvp server in my guild, Royal elven guard, than anywhere else, or in any other game. You were crowded in and forced to be social, you had to either befriend people and join them, or make enemies and compete with them. Survival by natural selection, if you cant group, you will level slow and be left behind. This caused tension. Tension is social. You also memorized your zone, the spawns, the drops, etc, as you were stuck here for a bit, and it gave you time to learn before you reached higher levels, and a reason to start new characters of other races. Dying 50 times in the newb zone taught you how NOT to die in the higher level zones, where losing exp really hurt. That's why those punk snowflakes sucked so bad at level 50, they were PL'ed by wizards using ice comet, and had no idea how to use their character in a group. I had 3 enchanters BECAUSE I wanted to start in different areas, with different races. My elf Wizard was level 50 before I ever saw Paneel, I made my erudite, specifically to enjoy this area. I was a master player, and the highest level on my server (I am literally 1 of the first 10 people to ever hit level 50 in EQ), and had never seen that side of the world, it was almost like playing a new game. A loving high elf enchanter in felwithe, an evil dark elf mage in Nektolus, an arrogant erudite wizard in paneel, roleplay meant something, and is social. This also made you a guide to characters of other races, a reason to make friends as you all spread out from home, while keeping a level of loyalty to said starting zone (role- players/ remember the purple tag?). It was also part of the difficulty. Fast spawns effected how you pulled, when you pulled and where you pulled to. You could get really messed up in that forest fort with the giants, they spawned so fast. It was part of the calculation when pulling, and part of the crowding. Competing for camps was an issue, and remember every issue becomes a social event. "Train to zone" was a common occurrence, and players had to learn how to cope with it. Not standing in the middle of the road in front of the zone, thinking you were safe to med up. Fear of death ment something, it was the core of the game, dying and losing 2 days of experience was a nightmare, and made you play better. Made you think, made you work as a teammate far better. I built social bonds with many people. I became famous, because I guarded the zone entrances with my enchanter, dropping an area mesmerize, and then a mem blur on entire trains, saving countless lives. Karnors keep, the left side for zoning in the right side for zoning out, that was all me, because I guarded the entrance with mesmerization to stop trains for my guild as they held the keep. I got into so many groups and made so many friends, just because of that. The games today suck, you just respawn, no harm no foul. That is a joke to a serious EQ player back in the day. Dying was punishment, dont die! Play smart. There was no safe place. The mobs were abundant, spawning everywhere and walking around, pathing everywhere. It took sometimes hours to find what you thought was a safe pulling point. There was no safe place, the game was not designed to be a solo game. Shamans were not making SoW potions so people could run across norrath, only the poor and those who sucked did that, everyone else took a port. Shamans sold sow pots so you could navigate the wild areas, due to nonstop respawns and pathing. A way to escape death, train to zone! These are the tactics the original programmers used to force social interaction. Reducing spawn rates gives Necros and Mages complete dominance over the zone (this is exactly why everyone today thinks they are OP). Fear kiting was dangerous, you never knew when your target would walk into the path of another mob. Killing the mob fast was the mages thing, if he didnt, the mob would spawn again right on top of his rooted enemy, we called them adds, and this is why enchanters were important. You negate the purpose of the enchanter if there is no threat of nonstop adds. And then of course there are pvp players. Sneaking into your racial, or alignment enemies newb zones was fantastic fun. If you were spotted, they would be yelling your location out in the zone. What made sneaking hard was a multitude of invis seeing undead, respawning and walking everywhere. Chanters turning into trees to avoid being seen by the newb party and then having to slowly crawl away without them noticing the tree was moving, so you could invis undead before that random skele crossed your path, you see him coming!!! You cant get into the dark elf city to hunt lower level guards if you cant get pass the high level gate guards. This is WHY level 1 skeles were everywhere in newb zones. This is why they had a spawn rate of 30 seconds, and this is why they had agro toward any level. You have taken a major part of the social interaction out of the game, and lowered the difficulty bar tremendously by reducing spawn rates. Your not going to attract the original player base by pandering to the very people who couldn't handle this type of higher level game play that led to the fall of EQ and the rise of garbage like WoW. The precedent today is how easy can we make it. Original EQ was not children, it was young adults looking for a challenging environment. You cannot release something called original EQ, and right off the rip nerf the starting zones. That initial struggle MATTERS, and sets the stage for the rest of the game.

Exploration was a big deal. Slowly, advancing from zone to zone, with the tension of imminent death looming over your head while you searched for a new place to hunt in at your level was surreal. Higher level mobs, stalking you as you traversed the wild. Trying to avoid being spotted while they pathed everywhere. I dont see how you can avoid removing this, as everyone playing knows the world, and is just recreating a character, but possibly finding a way to move some things would be nice. I remember stumbling upon a cave, hidden in a forest under some brush. It was a whole zone! noone even heard of it....the place with all the giant floating sperm cells. I cant remember the name. what a laugh though.

Kill stealing..everyone hated it. but it was part of the social atmosphere. You did not want to solo as a tank when a mage could come along and one shot your kill to finish him off and grab the experience, infuriating!! but this caused warriors to find groups. Now we have a reason for the cleric. Instead of warriors sitting forever, they are looking for that cleric buddy, a big part of EQ was warriors and clerics learning how to support each other. Warriors learning to protect the cleric even if everyone else in the group dies. The cleric can res, and only he can (there were very few paladins I my time). That bond mattered at high levels, it mattered in raids, it created friends, and in the KSer's case, enemies. Everything that forced the group ... removed the solo player. If you want an easy solo play, then we have Skyrim. EQ was a group game. KSing revealed a characters personality, you knew that Gergeo375 was a bad guy, he is known for ksing. You now know that he will grab the rare loot w/o the groups consent soon as the mob falls. Bad guys matter, they are part of the real social environment. There were parties specifically designed to punk a solo mage kser. I made a Mage specifically to KS (an evil dark elf mage, so acted evil). It was my mission with that mage. I had fun searching for parties I could KS, and they had fun trying to stop me. I made enemies with that mage too. I was hated on that server, HATED. But that was part of it. My enchanter was loved, famous, and sought out by everyone. I logged in with my enchanter and immediately received 100 tells with people wanting to me join them, even begging me. I logged in with my Mage on a different server and immediately received 100s of tells with people hunting me. I had bounty's placed on my head. People trying to train me, looking for me, finding me, waiting patiently for me to engage something, and then dragging a train on me. All, more social interaction. More comradery. Better teams. More fun. The bad guys give the good guys a reason to team up, otherwise they are sitting by themselves bored. Grinding, grinding, grinding. Then that kser hits them a few times, now we have a party, a party searching for a mage in an forest infested with giant wasps, that respawn every 30 seconds, and path everywhere. They are locked in nonstop combat looking for the boss mob, that fricken ksing mage! and when they find him, the thrill of the fight is amazing. and look, they jumped 2 levels in the process of being in a group. 6 hrs went by and noone realized it. Shat man, I got to go to work! (I realize that's predominately a pvp server thing/but it was also when players chose to be pvp on pve servers, when they engaged pvp they became pvp with him, also nerfed though)but nothing beats the NICE cleric, if you run a nice cleric, not a prick who thinks you owe him, you are god in original EQ. log in, crash, log in crash, log in, only 500 tells this time. ehehe

Controlling raid zones and high level zones was part of the guild dynamic. SON, seekers of norrath, was famous for owning the outer plane zones on my main server. You either joined them (more social interaction) or you joined someone else to compete with them (more social interaction) or made some kind of treaty, or bargain with them to hunt there. or 5 smaller guilds banded together and raided SON first, then the held the zone. On the pvp server, this led to wars, which is the point of pvp. We had wars of 100 vs 100 that sometimes got so out of hand the server would crash. Wars... this also goes to the DM interaction. I cant remember the name of the forest, it was above the halfling city. It was basically a good zone, lighted nicely, and low level. The DM's held an event where they raided half the countryside with mid to high level undead, several of which were named 50+ level undead kings (DM controlled) and half of the server population participated. We were on the phones calling people to get on their character and help us!! People called out of work, or left early to get in on this giant war with the DM undead army. This is why EQ was called EVERCRACK. When it was done and said, we lost, the people of norrath lost, and that zone was forever changed to a dark forest, filled with high level undead (kithicor, yes?). It had an actual game changing effect. At that point, we never knew wth the DM's would do. Guilds really mean something now. You wanted to be part of a guild so you could deal with DM's raids against your zones. Zones started to become "yours." Bixbie invasions, giant bee things with human heads were hell, and helluva fun. DM's taking control of the festering hags in Unrest was the greatest fun. I see you guys talking about not wanting trains. Banning people for training. In the original EQ, the vanilla version that you want to simulate here, the DM's themselves deliberately created trains and ran the entire population right out of Unrest. Train to zone!!! A DM created train. We had to form up in groups and go in with a strategy to overcome being wiped from a festering hags train (high levels guarding low levels) and that fricken giant hand!! the god DM. we would bond together, 3 or 4 major guilds and come running to kill that train and reclaim Unrest. 15 hours to organize and execute. Again, social interaction. There will be nothing nostalgic about vanilla EQ w/o DM interaction. It'll be a game with poor graphics and alot of stress that holds the attention of only a few die hard players. It wont take long before they go back to their established characters, guilds, and friends, on w/e server they are currently playing on. I will not come back to play a 20 year old game with Nintendo level graphics, w/o the DM interaction, w/o the trains, and w/o the nonstop frenzy spawning and pathing. It wont be hard, it will be boring. Nostalgia will not be there, its not the same game. Anti-socializing is what killed EQ to begin with. I started a character not to long ago, to play with my little brother. Everyone is soloing with a merc, double or triple boxing multiple characters and there is very little social interaction. Lots of talk maybe, but not interaction with their toons in the fight against mobs and each other. It reminds me of an old AOL chat room. If the community is begging for original EQ then you need to give them original EQ, not just another server that completely misses the point of original EQ, which was, again, social interaction, TEAMS. These level 85 SK's I was shown, this is a whole different game now, what they call EQ now, is totally different. Guy running through a zone pulling 100 mobs and killing them all with an aoe is retarded. I mean these are blue cons, in my day it took a group to kill a single blue con, or a well armed twink and his cleric buddy, unless you wanted 5 minutes of downtime after every fight. Why not play diablo? that is not EQ, what I was shown is a far cry from original EQ. Minimizing my screen to switch characters spell or action after spell or action, the strategy being the best combo of spells, never the best teamwork. If these guys want Original EQ, then understand most of old EQ was outside. Was trains, ksing, and running for your life due to nonstop spawning. Learning, planning, and executing a strategy to pull safely to the place your team called "camp" Only necros soloed, and 50% of the time they were begging to join soemones group. They remade the necro and gave him all this mana swapping crap specifically so he could group, because even the solo class itself, couldnt really solo. and that was the first major unbalance of the game.

The horror show of difficulty WAS original EQ. Corpse running, paying a cleric 200 plat for a 90% rez. Renting a necro to grab your corpse and drag it from harm, or negotiating with a guild, yours or someone elses to fight their way to the bottom of Sol B for a corpse retrieval, a 6 hour fight, a quest, a player created quest. A guild of 30, 8 of them dying en route to your corpse, more corpse runs, everyone stressed, and then the final satisfaction of retrieval. Paying wizards for teleports to keep from running for 3 hours across the plains. Negotiations, friends, deals, enemies, all part of the social interaction. Enchanters mezzing entire parties in pvp, charming the wizard and setting him against the cleric, then re-messing, and wiping the melee one at a time (also nerfed). 1 guy takes all 6 of you out, while you rant at each other in chat about it! or you resist that mes! and the chanter is running for dear life, the exhilaration of rooting him and killing him! the REVENGE!!! nothing feels better. That heart pumping, "I'm gonna get that guy!" every class had a niche it could fill, and w/o each other we were screwed. Necros holding entire camps, Mage KSers, Wizard robberbarrons, Enchanter warmongers, Druid lifesavers, the ever elusive cleric, the struggling paladin, the sucky warrior who suddenly becomes the key to everything high level, the tricky rogue, the rich shaman, etc. You take away the bad stuff and the good stuff is meaningless.

The stress, and tension made EQ famous. The complaints of the snowflakes killed it. "why cant I spawn with my armor on?" because dying is punishment.
"why did I lose all my experience when I died" because dying is punishment
"They spawn to fast, its to hard to pull" Then practice, and learn, get innovative
"what does pulling mean?" pfft

"why do all the players suck?" because there is no consequence for being stupid.

Dont lower the spawn rates.
Create DM controlled events.
Dont punish Ksers, or trainers.
Dont block guilds from holding zones.
That is vanilla EQ.

Deepwater helm? was that it? the solo paladins dream, oh and a shiny new mithril 2hander with a hand me down fbss

that is old school EQ.

Twinks. The beloved twink in your group, who can hold that horde of bandits long enough to pull that TRAIN TO ZONE.

NOOOO! I died right as I zoned and my body collapsed on the other side of the wall!!

cry...

That is old school EQ.

Its the emotion. I can only think of 2 other games that had it in the last 30 years. Eve online, and Rust.

The new players are hearing from the old players how cool the game was. You yourself must remember it or you wouldn't be doing this project. Keep the emotion in the game. Keep the hate and the anger. Its what drives us. The frustration is what gives the feeling of satisfaction. Your newbie EQ players, and yea almost all of you are newbies to us, are already complaining about the very things that were taken out and ruined the game. It wasn't luclin that ruined EQ, it was the whiners. It got boring and then WOW stole the show. Then they did it to wow, and wow sucked and now everyone is scattered amongst 50 crap wannabee MMO's all dreaming of original EQ.

I pray you reconsider adjusting the spawn rates, that one thing will bring me back. Brad was the genius, not you. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Follow his model.

I hope I never meet you in real life or in game. I congratulate you on writing the most pathetic, self congratulating post to ever grace this forum.

[cd288]

KSers and trainers were punished relatively quickly back in vanilla.

Vanilla also didn’t have 300 people all in a newbie zone at once, so your complaint about resulting of spawn times is inapplicable here.

[Bardp1999]

OP has a massive BMI

[bradsamma]

well, I downloaded and played last night, and will play allday today, so far, its awesome. But we will see in 2 months. from what I am reading here, and seeing in game chat, that blue and red server need to come down. otherwise, most of this pop and their alts will be level 50 by December, doing the same thing, getting bored and going back to their established toons. I mean I actually complained about the nonstop rain last night, 5 hours of rain...and got frustrated at the training newbs in CB...but THAT is EQ.

that frustration is why I will play today.

You need therapy and/or medication.

There is a huge stigma against getting proper professional help for mental health. Don't let that deter you from getting help so you can live a rich and full life.

[Cecily]

You need therapy and/or medication.

There is a huge stigma against getting proper professional help for mental health. Don't let that deter you from getting help so you can live a rich and full life.


That's a horrible thing to tell someone, considering just how many shitty therapists there are out there. Therapy is extremely expensive and the odds of finding someone who is an "artist" at that profession who clicks with the patient and, most importantly, can actually help are slim to none.


Check your priverlage cisheteronormative scum

[Wonkie]

heartwarming thread :) op went from incoherent complaining to joining in on the fun

welcome home old friend

[solleks]

that is a huge wall but i'm curious what it says anyone got a tldr summary?

[bradsamma]

That's a horrible thing to tell someone, considering just how many shitty therapists there are out there. Therapy is extremely expensive and the odds of finding someone who is an "artist" at that profession who clicks with the patient and, most importantly, can actually help are slim to none.


Check your priverlage cisheteronormative scum

I know you're joking around but this kind if crap really is dangerous to spout out. Licensed therapists are effective and good at what they do. Obviously don't visit one of the nutjob born-again Christian ones but otherwise seeking help is absolutely the way to go.

[bubur]

well, I downloaded and played last night, and will play allday today, so far, its awesome. But we will see in 2 months. from what I am reading here, and seeing in game chat, that blue and red server need to come down. otherwise, most of this pop and their alts will be level 50 by December, doing the same thing, getting bored and going back to their established toons. I mean I actually complained about the nonstop rain last night, 5 hours of rain...and got frustrated at the training newbs in CB...but THAT is EQ.

that frustration is why I will play today.

Heck yea bruther, enjoy it while it lasts

in 2 months green will be a manastone camp simulator since that is the most easily accessible and guaranteed loot with their /list system only 1 week lookout. There won't be anything better for most people to do

if you wanna come back and comment on that bit of unclassicness at that time, you'll find no shortage of people agreeing I spect

[Ennewi]

I know you're joking around but this kind if crap really is dangerous to spout out. Licensed therapists are effective and good at what they do. Obviously don't visit one of the nutjob born-again Christian ones but otherwise seeking help is absolutely the way to go.

There was a reason that scene from Good Will Hunting made the cut. Even therapists with Phds can be an absolute headache / waste of time talking with. Psychiatrist who refuse to push meds are probably the most reliable option. Seek help, yes, but a lot of professionals can do more harm than good, often without even realizing it. Think about the number of teachers that were actually worth a damn versus the rest. The profession is an important one and all children should seek out an education, but there are ones that make the process unbearable to the point where the average person would be better of self-taught.

[Cecily]

I know you're joking around but this kind if crap really is dangerous to spout out. Licensed therapists are effective and good at what they do. Obviously don't visit one of the nutjob born-again Christian ones but otherwise seeking help is absolutely the way to go.

I'm not joking. Most of them are shit.

[Cecily]

LiCeNSEd tHeraPisTs aRe eFFecTiVe aNd GoOd At WhAt thEy dO

[Bardp1999]

that is a huge wall but i'm curious what it says anyone got a tldr summary?

Scholars have debated the TLDR of OPs manifesto for centuries, but it turns out that no one has actually ever read it.

[Eggbell]

Cringe. Autist. Inflated ego.

[WizardEQ]

This post was made 10 years too late. Kudos to whomever!

[BlackBellamy]

that is a huge wall but i'm curious what it says anyone got a tldr summary?

I am a gigantic troll. I am also the first wizard to 50 in the history of all games ever and something about Leeroy Jenkins and also I can't remember Nagafen's name.
Brad was a genius, and Rogean and crew suck and should just follow Brad's vision.

[fuckshit22]

that is a huge wall but i'm curious what it says anyone got a tldr summary?

keep respawns short, the rest is a way overdone credibility signal.

[kjs86z]

op should give cocaine a whirl

[Bisonzabi]

Yes, we were the original players. The first. I didn't do everything, but I did quite a bit. Friend of mine was the first to assemble the staff of the wheel. Friend of mine was the first to loot a weight reducing bag in high hold pass. Friend of mine was the first to get married in the game. Rival guild was the first to slay Lady Voxx. The first player to be pvp'ed was down the street from me. First person to kill the POD was in my guild. First person to make a guild I knew. First person to find the bone bladed claymore..

Etc.

We were original EQ, you are the guys wishing you were us.

Sorry)

Well my friends dad worked at Nintendo. How about that?

[AgentEpilot]

op should give cocaine a whirl


Think he should go for heroin, he may calm down enough to type a succinct post that people might actually be able to read through.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

and you are a vet right? it takes me 2 hrs to solo decaying skeles and turn in bone chips popping my newb toon to level 6. then an afternoon farming cb belts from green cons puts me at 14. 1 day.

all the camping and and lifers who reached 50 in a week do this and more, then come back and camp lowbie zones while arguing camp rules with newbs because they want t twink their sckass war with a dragoon dirk.

You guys all suck. i gave it a chance its barely nostalgic and the constant crashes is quite annoying.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

yea it did, zones were crashing because to many people in them, they had to open new servers constantly.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

yea I had some fun with it for about a month, but im getting bored now, the crybabies are starting to rule the chat, and the high level losers camping lowbie spawns and quoting camp rules to justify their pathetic ability is becoming overwhelming again. not to mention Seal Teams power grind and destruction of the economy already. I watched a simple SBS go from 5 plat to 100 plat in less than a week.

So I appreciate the work p99! a full decade of work to entertain me for a month. nostalgic? not with out the DM events. id say ………… boring grind.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

liberal projections are about to get a lot of you killed in RL, wise up

[HopefulButConcerned101]

fair enough, but from my perspective it was recall. I was basically just typing what I remembered as it came to mind. nostalgic moment for me, twisted with a plea. and I was trying to say, yea I know what I am talking about. Now that I have dived into the game hardcore for a month, to be honest I had more nostalgia typing that post than playing this "version" of old eq. I might play another week for shits and giggles.

[Hazek]

Dear Ancient Wizard,

You have some respectable accomplishments. And I empathize with you. But let me teach you if you're willing to listen; some relative what you said, some not.

- Writing is art and should be molded. Read what you write with a faster pace because skimming is natural. If its hard to understand then remove words and simplify, even commas.

- Use smaller words, shorter sentences, use commas and rearrange them.

- Just because I can teach you something doesn't mean i'm an arrogant know-it-all.

- Start or end conversations with positivity and truth. Its more persuasive. Falsehood is flattery that people hate and will backfire, unless they're dumb and can't see it.

- Don't assume

- Most people don't care about what you did, only what you're currently doing, especially if its a video game. I was a vanilla WoW High Warlord and multi-glad and it makes no difference, even though its fun to say. Accept this for your own relief and forget about "who you were" even if it was important to you. Do things for your own satisfaction or results, not because you want others to care about it. And not to be confused with good deeds in general.

- Trying get others to see your perspective or agree is a waste of time, even though its we're inclined to.

- Arguing with morons is worse for you than it is for them and will only lead to frustration.

- An enemy will do the opposite of what you want.

- Step back after everything you wrote and condense it to a summary.

- I started to read what you wrote but skimmed in search of practical substance.

- If its "bad" then delete it with no attachment regardless of how long it took.

- Tone, rhythm, rhymes and words with similar letters sounds better if you don't overdo it. Speak clearly and avoid common cliche phrases. Read it quickly and write like you're speaking. Its better if it flows. Its ok to repeat but redundancy dilutes.

~ Energy is practical, not only ambiguous. Everything has energy including different words.

Cryptic is only meaningless if the source and interpreters are stupid and ignorant and refuse to think further. Nor should you expect them to.

Consider everything.

Use a cliche but change it.

I only practice what I teach if I care enough.

Use examples.

Rule makers don't bend, they break.

Sometimes its just for fun.

Read, fast, edit, sleep, and repeat. Its different in the morning so always sleep before you release.

Sometimes.

Peace.

[Hazek]

And I agree about the whiners. Bunch of bluebie carebears.

[Vormotus]

After reading this thread during pulls in HHP ...

I cant contribute anything meaningful, but here is a pic I enjoyed a lot

https://i.imgur.com/tjAH6zD.jpg

[Hazek]

I really do sympathize with you though OP. I hear you completely. But the reality is that nobody cares, sadly, except for people like me. But even that doesn't matter. And that's just the nature of online games. People care at the time, but years later its nothing. Its also what inevitably makes me uninstall; 100% waste of time with nothing to show after all that effort. Sad, but true. Congrats on the good times you had though. Must have been lots of fun. But its time to let go. EQ will never be the same. Maybe Pantheon will revive the "rivalry and excitement" but that's already looking grim because they're adding "modern" features. The best thing is to forget about online gaming, just easier said than done. Those times are long gone and forgotten but don't let it hit you so hard when people don't care. The reality is its just a game and always will be.

[Hazek]

Like I know how frustrating it is to have all those awesome accomplishments and put in so much effort to write a lengthy post and try to get things to change or improve and people just mock you. And all i'm saying is just to expect it for your own sanity.

[Pozzey]

This is seal teams fault.

[ArunaGreen]

Holy shit I just saw this post for the first time and I'm fucking dying from laughing. Hilarious.

[Hazek]

Holy shit I just saw this post for the first time and I'm fucking dying from laughing. Hilarious.

LOLOL HAHAHA YOU'RE A RETARD HAHAHAHAHA ALOLOLOLLOLOLOL LOLOLOLOLOLOL

[ArunaGreen]

Also, LOL at how many people can't realize this is a troll. God damn. Some good ol red con trolling here.

[Morratiz]

After reaching the last page it dawned on me that I skipped OP's post due to length but read 14 pages worth of comments with no break.

I played myself...

[solleks]

Someone summarize OP in one sentence

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Someone summarize OP in one sentence

I am King Shitforbrains and I once ruled all of Norrath!

[Sagus]

Hello all,

I cant tell you how happy I am to see this project. My little brother told me about it a few months ago, as I havent looked at EQ in a long time. I'm ecstatic! ... but a little disappointed and concerned about some of the things I am reading. I hope the staff seriously considers my points.

First, I played EQ on day 1. I was the first Wizard to hit level 50 on my server, Fennin Ro, and I am the one who lost to Drakky in the arena with my wizard, and then pvp'ed him for a win with my Enchanter the next day. I was also present for the famous "Leroy Jenkins" event, I was in the raid. I was also the first person to challenge Fironia Vie, and die horribly at the gates of Felwithe while the DM controlled toon opened the new zone, Fironia Vie. Needless to say I am as old school as it gets. Forgive me, but we are talking something like 20 years ago and my memory is not perfect, going forward here. I had characters on several pve servers, I founded the guild, "Elven Royal guard." I had characters on the base pvp server, the race war pvp server and the alignment based pvp server (frakin newts!). two 50 Wizards, three 50 Enchanters, two 50 Necromancers, 50 Mage. As you can see I loved casters. I also soloed a paladin to 50 to prove a point (its not about being trained or ksed, its about being strategic, its not about spawn rates or being pl'ed, its about patience, thought, and tactics). ah, what was that awesome helm called...it had a heal spell, I cant remember, and of course a rubicite wearing 50 warrior, which they nerfed, along with all 3 of my chanters. lol. oh, and a 50 cleric. and a 50 druid. I was there when we freed the big dragon at the end, I was among the 10,000 corpses the first time we failed and she flew all over norrath killing everyone in every zone, regardless of level. Cant remember the dragons name, the sleeper? or nagafen? I think nagafen was in sol A?? I canna remember. I quit shortly after that, to many nerfs, to many whiners, game was not the same. So, my memory really fails at that point. oh lava duct crawlers! the coveted golden efreeti boots, nagafen was sol b?

Anyways, here goes....

What made original EQ awesome was not just the difficulty, it was the competition and the exploration. These 3 things played a pivotal role in the game, creating a realistic social atmosphere. But most of all, the DM interaction and events. I will give examples coming up, but first lets talk about spawn reduction. Being boxed in at the newbie zone and racial starting area was part of the game. This did a few things. You met lots of people, right off! It created a bond between the players starting in these zones. People fantasizing about being the good guy started as high elves or wood elves, they had like minds, saw the game and their role similarly, and the same went for people playing dark elves, they wanted to be evil, and had that same mentality. My favorite was Felwithe and Kelethin. The crushbone orcs and orc hill, especially on the pvp servers. I had more fun guarding orc hill with my 4th enchanter, keeping her at level 16, permanently, fighting against level 12 dark elf pk'ers, hunting newbs in crushbone on the pvp server in my guild, Royal elven guard, than anywhere else, or in any other game. You were crowded in and forced to be social, you had to either befriend people and join them, or make enemies and compete with them. Survival by natural selection, if you cant group, you will level slow and be left behind. This caused tension. Tension is social. You also memorized your zone, the spawns, the drops, etc, as you were stuck here for a bit, and it gave you time to learn before you reached higher levels, and a reason to start new characters of other races. Dying 50 times in the newb zone taught you how NOT to die in the higher level zones, where losing exp really hurt. That's why those punk snowflakes sucked so bad at level 50, they were PL'ed by wizards using ice comet, and had no idea how to use their character in a group. I had 3 enchanters BECAUSE I wanted to start in different areas, with different races. My elf Wizard was level 50 before I ever saw Paneel, I made my erudite, specifically to enjoy this area. I was a master player, and the highest level on my server (I am literally 1 of the first 10 people to ever hit level 50 in EQ), and had never seen that side of the world, it was almost like playing a new game. A loving high elf enchanter in felwithe, an evil dark elf mage in Nektolus, an arrogant erudite wizard in paneel, roleplay meant something, and is social. This also made you a guide to characters of other races, a reason to make friends as you all spread out from home, while keeping a level of loyalty to said starting zone (role- players/ remember the purple tag?). It was also part of the difficulty. Fast spawns effected how you pulled, when you pulled and where you pulled to. You could get really messed up in that forest fort with the giants, they spawned so fast. It was part of the calculation when pulling, and part of the crowding. Competing for camps was an issue, and remember every issue becomes a social event. "Train to zone" was a common occurrence, and players had to learn how to cope with it. Not standing in the middle of the road in front of the zone, thinking you were safe to med up. Fear of death ment something, it was the core of the game, dying and losing 2 days of experience was a nightmare, and made you play better. Made you think, made you work as a teammate far better. I built social bonds with many people. I became famous, because I guarded the zone entrances with my enchanter, dropping an area mesmerize, and then a mem blur on entire trains, saving countless lives. Karnors keep, the left side for zoning in the right side for zoning out, that was all me, because I guarded the entrance with mesmerization to stop trains for my guild as they held the keep. I got into so many groups and made so many friends, just because of that. The games today suck, you just respawn, no harm no foul. That is a joke to a serious EQ player back in the day. Dying was punishment, dont die! Play smart. There was no safe place. The mobs were abundant, spawning everywhere and walking around, pathing everywhere. It took sometimes hours to find what you thought was a safe pulling point. There was no safe place, the game was not designed to be a solo game. Shamans were not making SoW potions so people could run across norrath, only the poor and those who sucked did that, everyone else took a port. Shamans sold sow pots so you could navigate the wild areas, due to nonstop respawns and pathing. A way to escape death, train to zone! These are the tactics the original programmers used to force social interaction. Reducing spawn rates gives Necros and Mages complete dominance over the zone (this is exactly why everyone today thinks they are OP). Fear kiting was dangerous, you never knew when your target would walk into the path of another mob. Killing the mob fast was the mages thing, if he didnt, the mob would spawn again right on top of his rooted enemy, we called them adds, and this is why enchanters were important. You negate the purpose of the enchanter if there is no threat of nonstop adds. And then of course there are pvp players. Sneaking into your racial, or alignment enemies newb zones was fantastic fun. If you were spotted, they would be yelling your location out in the zone. What made sneaking hard was a multitude of invis seeing undead, respawning and walking everywhere. Chanters turning into trees to avoid being seen by the newb party and then having to slowly crawl away without them noticing the tree was moving, so you could invis undead before that random skele crossed your path, you see him coming!!! You cant get into the dark elf city to hunt lower level guards if you cant get pass the high level gate guards. This is WHY level 1 skeles were everywhere in newb zones. This is why they had a spawn rate of 30 seconds, and this is why they had agro toward any level. You have taken a major part of the social interaction out of the game, and lowered the difficulty bar tremendously by reducing spawn rates. Your not going to attract the original player base by pandering to the very people who couldn't handle this type of higher level game play that led to the fall of EQ and the rise of garbage like WoW. The precedent today is how easy can we make it. Original EQ was not children, it was young adults looking for a challenging environment. You cannot release something called original EQ, and right off the rip nerf the starting zones. That initial struggle MATTERS, and sets the stage for the rest of the game.

Exploration was a big deal. Slowly, advancing from zone to zone, with the tension of imminent death looming over your head while you searched for a new place to hunt in at your level was surreal. Higher level mobs, stalking you as you traversed the wild. Trying to avoid being spotted while they pathed everywhere. I dont see how you can avoid removing this, as everyone playing knows the world, and is just recreating a character, but possibly finding a way to move some things would be nice. I remember stumbling upon a cave, hidden in a forest under some brush. It was a whole zone! noone even heard of it....the place with all the giant floating sperm cells. I cant remember the name. what a laugh though.

Kill stealing..everyone hated it. but it was part of the social atmosphere. You did not want to solo as a tank when a mage could come along and one shot your kill to finish him off and grab the experience, infuriating!! but this caused warriors to find groups. Now we have a reason for the cleric. Instead of warriors sitting forever, they are looking for that cleric buddy, a big part of EQ was warriors and clerics learning how to support each other. Warriors learning to protect the cleric even if everyone else in the group dies. The cleric can res, and only he can (there were very few paladins I my time). That bond mattered at high levels, it mattered in raids, it created friends, and in the KSer's case, enemies. Everything that forced the group ... removed the solo player. If you want an easy solo play, then we have Skyrim. EQ was a group game. KSing revealed a characters personality, you knew that Gergeo375 was a bad guy, he is known for ksing. You now know that he will grab the rare loot w/o the groups consent soon as the mob falls. Bad guys matter, they are part of the real social environment. There were parties specifically designed to punk a solo mage kser. I made a Mage specifically to KS (an evil dark elf mage, so acted evil). It was my mission with that mage. I had fun searching for parties I could KS, and they had fun trying to stop me. I made enemies with that mage too. I was hated on that server, HATED. But that was part of it. My enchanter was loved, famous, and sought out by everyone. I logged in with my enchanter and immediately received 100 tells with people wanting to me join them, even begging me. I logged in with my Mage on a different server and immediately received 100s of tells with people hunting me. I had bounty's placed on my head. People trying to train me, looking for me, finding me, waiting patiently for me to engage something, and then dragging a train on me. All, more social interaction. More comradery. Better teams. More fun. The bad guys give the good guys a reason to team up, otherwise they are sitting by themselves bored. Grinding, grinding, grinding. Then that kser hits them a few times, now we have a party, a party searching for a mage in an forest infested with giant wasps, that respawn every 30 seconds, and path everywhere. They are locked in nonstop combat looking for the boss mob, that fricken ksing mage! and when they find him, the thrill of the fight is amazing. and look, they jumped 2 levels in the process of being in a group. 6 hrs went by and noone realized it. Shat man, I got to go to work! (I realize that's predominately a pvp server thing/but it was also when players chose to be pvp on pve servers, when they engaged pvp they became pvp with him, also nerfed though)but nothing beats the NICE cleric, if you run a nice cleric, not a prick who thinks you owe him, you are god in original EQ. log in, crash, log in crash, log in, only 500 tells this time. ehehe

Controlling raid zones and high level zones was part of the guild dynamic. SON, seekers of norrath, was famous for owning the outer plane zones on my main server. You either joined them (more social interaction) or you joined someone else to compete with them (more social interaction) or made some kind of treaty, or bargain with them to hunt there. or 5 smaller guilds banded together and raided SON first, then the held the zone. On the pvp server, this led to wars, which is the point of pvp. We had wars of 100 vs 100 that sometimes got so out of hand the server would crash. Wars... this also goes to the DM interaction. I cant remember the name of the forest, it was above the halfling city. It was basically a good zone, lighted nicely, and low level. The DM's held an event where they raided half the countryside with mid to high level undead, several of which were named 50+ level undead kings (DM controlled) and half of the server population participated. We were on the phones calling people to get on their character and help us!! People called out of work, or left early to get in on this giant war with the DM undead army. This is why EQ was called EVERCRACK. When it was done and said, we lost, the people of norrath lost, and that zone was forever changed to a dark forest, filled with high level undead (kithicor, yes?). It had an actual game changing effect. At that point, we never knew wth the DM's would do. Guilds really mean something now. You wanted to be part of a guild so you could deal with DM's raids against your zones. Zones started to become "yours." Bixbie invasions, giant bee things with human heads were hell, and helluva fun. DM's taking control of the festering hags in Unrest was the greatest fun. I see you guys talking about not wanting trains. Banning people for training. In the original EQ, the vanilla version that you want to simulate here, the DM's themselves deliberately created trains and ran the entire population right out of Unrest. Train to zone!!! A DM created train. We had to form up in groups and go in with a strategy to overcome being wiped from a festering hags train (high levels guarding low levels) and that fricken giant hand!! the god DM. we would bond together, 3 or 4 major guilds and come running to kill that train and reclaim Unrest. 15 hours to organize and execute. Again, social interaction. There will be nothing nostalgic about vanilla EQ w/o DM interaction. It'll be a game with poor graphics and alot of stress that holds the attention of only a few die hard players. It wont take long before they go back to their established characters, guilds, and friends, on w/e server they are currently playing on. I will not come back to play a 20 year old game with Nintendo level graphics, w/o the DM interaction, w/o the trains, and w/o the nonstop frenzy spawning and pathing. It wont be hard, it will be boring. Nostalgia will not be there, its not the same game. Anti-socializing is what killed EQ to begin with. I started a character not to long ago, to play with my little brother. Everyone is soloing with a merc, double or triple boxing multiple characters and there is very little social interaction. Lots of talk maybe, but not interaction with their toons in the fight against mobs and each other. It reminds me of an old AOL chat room. If the community is begging for original EQ then you need to give them original EQ, not just another server that completely misses the point of original EQ, which was, again, social interaction, TEAMS. These level 85 SK's I was shown, this is a whole different game now, what they call EQ now, is totally different. Guy running through a zone pulling 100 mobs and killing them all with an aoe is retarded. I mean these are blue cons, in my day it took a group to kill a single blue con, or a well armed twink and his cleric buddy, unless you wanted 5 minutes of downtime after every fight. Why not play diablo? that is not EQ, what I was shown is a far cry from original EQ. Minimizing my screen to switch characters spell or action after spell or action, the strategy being the best combo of spells, never the best teamwork. If these guys want Original EQ, then understand most of old EQ was outside. Was trains, ksing, and running for your life due to nonstop spawning. Learning, planning, and executing a strategy to pull safely to the place your team called "camp" Only necros soloed, and 50% of the time they were begging to join soemones group. They remade the necro and gave him all this mana swapping crap specifically so he could group, because even the solo class itself, couldnt really solo. and that was the first major unbalance of the game.

The horror show of difficulty WAS original EQ. Corpse running, paying a cleric 200 plat for a 90% rez. Renting a necro to grab your corpse and drag it from harm, or negotiating with a guild, yours or someone elses to fight their way to the bottom of Sol B for a corpse retrieval, a 6 hour fight, a quest, a player created quest. A guild of 30, 8 of them dying en route to your corpse, more corpse runs, everyone stressed, and then the final satisfaction of retrieval. Paying wizards for teleports to keep from running for 3 hours across the plains. Negotiations, friends, deals, enemies, all part of the social interaction. Enchanters mezzing entire parties in pvp, charming the wizard and setting him against the cleric, then re-messing, and wiping the melee one at a time (also nerfed). 1 guy takes all 6 of you out, while you rant at each other in chat about it! or you resist that mes! and the chanter is running for dear life, the exhilaration of rooting him and killing him! the REVENGE!!! nothing feels better. That heart pumping, "I'm gonna get that guy!" every class had a niche it could fill, and w/o each other we were screwed. Necros holding entire camps, Mage KSers, Wizard robberbarrons, Enchanter warmongers, Druid lifesavers, the ever elusive cleric, the struggling paladin, the sucky warrior who suddenly becomes the key to everything high level, the tricky rogue, the rich shaman, etc. You take away the bad stuff and the good stuff is meaningless.

The stress, and tension made EQ famous. The complaints of the snowflakes killed it. "why cant I spawn with my armor on?" because dying is punishment.
"why did I lose all my experience when I died" because dying is punishment
"They spawn to fast, its to hard to pull" Then practice, and learn, get innovative
"what does pulling mean?" pfft

"why do all the players suck?" because there is no consequence for being stupid.

Dont lower the spawn rates.
Create DM controlled events.
Dont punish Ksers, or trainers.
Dont block guilds from holding zones.
That is vanilla EQ.

Deepwater helm? was that it? the solo paladins dream, oh and a shiny new mithril 2hander with a hand me down fbss

that is old school EQ.

Twinks. The beloved twink in your group, who can hold that horde of bandits long enough to pull that TRAIN TO ZONE.

NOOOO! I died right as I zoned and my body collapsed on the other side of the wall!!

cry...

That is old school EQ.

Its the emotion. I can only think of 2 other games that had it in the last 30 years. Eve online, and Rust.

The new players are hearing from the old players how cool the game was. You yourself must remember it or you wouldn't be doing this project. Keep the emotion in the game. Keep the hate and the anger. Its what drives us. The frustration is what gives the feeling of satisfaction. Your newbie EQ players, and yea almost all of you are newbies to us, are already complaining about the very things that were taken out and ruined the game. It wasn't luclin that ruined EQ, it was the whiners. It got boring and then WOW stole the show. Then they did it to wow, and wow sucked and now everyone is scattered amongst 50 crap wannabee MMO's all dreaming of original EQ.

I pray you reconsider adjusting the spawn rates, that one thing will bring me back. Brad was the genius, not you. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Follow his model.

Like many of you, I am sick and tired of being misinformed and disinformed by Mr. HopefulButConcerned101. That's why I'm writing this, to bring meaning, direction, and purpose into our lives. Although the pressing need for encouraging open, civic engagement is acknowledged here, the main focus of this letter regards HopefulButConcerned101's desire to bar workers from participation in the social totality as fully developing individuals. Speaking of footling vermin, he is willing to promote truth and justice when it's convenient. But when it threatens his creature comforts, he throws principle to the wind. It's time for us to mobilize and speak up against his piteous hate sheets. Silence and apathy perpetuate the ignorance and obfuscate the fact that the reason HopefulButConcerned101 wants to perform the most inhumane acts of violence Norrath has ever seen is that he's completely obnoxious. If you believe you have another explanation for his semi-intelligible behavior, then please write and tell me about it.

I want my life to count. I want to be part of something significant and lasting. I want to explain why credentialism is a failed philosophy. (Hint: It's because it denies the realities of human nature and teaches that terrorism resonates with the body's natural alpha waves.)

According to the latest claims, if HopefulButConcerned101 would abandon his name-calling and false dichotomies it would be much easier for me to ensure that everyone knows that muting the voice of anyone who dares to speak out against HopefulButConcerned101 is a mug's game. The only reason he does things like that is because the emphasis his cajoleries place on personal victimization includes a refusal to hold obdurate, vapid dissemblers in any way responsible for their actions. Nevertheless, when it comes to accepting or rebuking his primitive, unruly missives, we are faced with the same choice that Moses gave Israel: good or evil, light or dark, life or death, freedom or slavery. One shouldn't need to think too hard about those options to realize that HopefulButConcerned101's ability to capitalize on the economic chaos, racial tensions, and social discontent of the current historical moment can be explained in large part by the following. HopefulButConcerned101's arguments would be a lot more effective if they were at least accurate or intelligent, not just a load of bull for the sake of being controversial.

Was HopefulButConcerned101 just trying to be cute when he said that he was there in Everquest when Leeroy did what he did? I sure hope so because if I am correctly informed, he always represents himself as the victim, as betrayed and sinned against, demeaned and tormented because of society's jealousy. In any case, a large number of people, myself included, figured HopefulButConcerned101 would never stoop so low as to institutionalize collectivism through systematic violence, distorted religion, and dubious science. Nevertheless, despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, he chose to do exactly that. As a result, I can safely say that HopefulButConcerned101 champions deconstructionism, exploitation, and imperialist war. That said, let me continue.

If I withheld my feelings on this matter, I'd be no less dishonest than HopefulButConcerned101. I have some of his incoherent press releases in front of me right now. In one of them, HopefulButConcerned101 avouches that he's the most recent incarnation of the Buddha. If you don't find that shocking then consider that thoughtful people are being forced to admit, after years of evading the truth, that I have been right. I was right when I said that it is an indisputable verity that I myself find HopefulButConcerned101's failed attempts to sacrifice children on the twin altars of elitism and greed mildly amusing. I was right when I said that my concern and outrage are not directed solely at HopefulButConcerned101, but at all those who seek to trick us into trading freedom for serfdom. And I was right when I said that I do not find press releases that are libidinous, discourteous, and vain to be “funny”. Maybe I lack a sense of humor, but maybe HopefulButConcerned101 avows that power, politics, and privilege should prevail over the rule of law. This fraud, this lie, is just one among the thousands he perpetrates.

One of the enduring effects of HopefulButConcerned101's polemics is the way they will impose hypocritical new restrictions on society just to satisfy some sort of morally reprehensible drive for power. Not only does HopefulButConcerned101 use scapegoating as a foil to draw anger away from more accurate targets, but he then commands his drudges, “Go, and do thou likewise.” Don't let yourself be buffaloed by him. Don't let yourself be persuaded to believe that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully just because a lot of philopolemical coofs happen to believe that. Analyze the arguments for yourself and see if you agree with my claim that HopefulButConcerned101 may unwittingly rob, steal, cheat, and murder. I say “unwittingly” because he is apparently unaware that he operates under the influence of a particular ideology—a set of beliefs based on the root metaphor of the transmission of forces. Until you understand this root metaphor you won't be able to grasp why HopefulButConcerned101 has abandoned ethics altogether. Disguised in this drollery is an important message: Conspiracy theories are HopefulButConcerned101's bread and butter, and the wilder, the better. His most outré claim is that everyone who scrambles aboard the HopefulButConcerned101 bandwagon is guaranteed a smooth ride. This claim sets a new standard for daffy, querulous tracts and shows how HopefulButConcerned101 has never had a single new idea. He has merely gussied up old concepts in new rhetoric, most recently in the meretricious jargon of cannibalism. This leads to an important point: I have a dream that my children will be able to live in a world filled with open spaces and beautiful wilderness—not in a dark, lazy world run by rash, shambolic moochers.

It doesn't really matter why HopefulButConcerned101 wants to rot out the foundations of our values. Whether it's due to a misplaced faith in WoW, bribes paid to HopefulButConcerned101 by rude, indelicate malcontents, or nagging from some of the chuffy, gutless loons in his club, the fact remains that that's what HopefulButConcerned101 wants. What I want, in contrast, is to notify you that while he's out conscripting traditional academic disciplines into the service of prætorianism and its ideological variants, the general public is shouldering the bill. Sadly, this is a bill of shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, depression and all its attendant miseries, and a despondency about HopefulButConcerned101's attempts to sell us fibs and fear mixed with a generous dollop of obscurantism. I am not going to go into too great a detail about eccentric, incorrigible wantwits, but be assured that his assumptions are matched in their untenability only by the arrogant fervor with which they are held. In the presence of high heaven and before the civilized world I therefore assert that every time he utters or writes a statement that supports Chekism—even indirectly—it sends a message that he has the linguistic prowess to produce a masterwork of meritorious literature. I avow that we mustn't let him make such statements, partly because it shocks my conscience to see him scorn and abjure reason, but primarily because he has been trying for quite some time to convince us that it is not only acceptable but indeed desirable to nurture and spread totalitarianism in our nation's heartland. I suggest he take this rotting ordure and dump it where he and his fellow homicidal dunces congregate. At least then we could keep our priorities in check without having to worry that he will lower scholastic standards.

HopefulButConcerned101 has compiled an impressive list of grievances against me. Not only are all of these grievances completely fictitious, but HopefulButConcerned101 says that he wants to make life better for everyone. Lacking a coherent ideology, however, HopefulButConcerned101 always ends up making our lives miserable. He claims that the rest of us are an inferior group of people, fit only to be enslaved, beaten, and butchered at the whim of our betters. Predictably, he cites no hard data for that claim. This is because no such data exist.

There is a war being fought in the unseen realm between the forces of good and evil, and the battlefield is your mind. The only way for us to win this war is to produce a compelling model of a society worth struggling for. In the absence of such a model, churlish tosspots typically retreat into specific cultural and ideological identity groups that make rights, status, and privilege claims on the basis of a victimized identity. If you think that HopefulButConcerned101 isn't planning on exploiting such identity groups, then consider that this whole discussion has turned into a war of words between a few people. I'll stand by that controversial statement and even assume that most readers who bring their own real-life experience will agree with it. At a bare minimum, HopefulButConcerned101's cold-blooded swampers like to shout, “Let's doctor evidence and classification systems and make hubristic generalizations to support haughty, preconceived views. That'll be wonderful. Hooray, hooray!” But that won't be wonderful. Rather, it'll organize a troika of base-minded yahoos, moralistic pipsqueaks, and batty scoundrels with the sole purpose of dissolving the bonds that join individuals to their natural communities.

Many people respond to HopefulButConcerned101's lily-livered schemes in the same way that they respond to television dramas. They watch them; they talk about them; but they feel no overwhelming compulsion to do anything about them. That's why I insist we teach people that HopefulButConcerned101 indisputably wants me to go into hiding. If I did, I'm sure the chortles from HopefulButConcerned101 and his lynch mob would be rich and prolonged, especially given how HopefulButConcerned101 has been implementing a disingenuous parody of justice called “HopefulButConcerned101-ism”. Should doing so buy HopefulButConcerned101 the right to dialogue, negotiation, concessions, and power? I say no because I would love to debate HopefulButConcerned101 about his views on immoralism. Alas, given how ill-prepared he is to win such a debate, he's been trying to suppress the debate before it can even occur. Such behavior tells us that HopefulButConcerned101 is a distasteful hedonist. Consequently, attempting to respond to his effusions with logic is futile. A more productive response is to observe that HopefulButConcerned101 is an expert at calming his opponents with sweet inversions of the truth. In case you don't believe me, consider how he has managed to convince an alarming number of people that trees cause more pollution than automobiles do. He does this even though he knows full well that he claims to have data supporting his assertion that he's God's chosen instrument to save our nation from impending doom. Naturally, he insists that he can't actually show us that data—for some unspecified reason, of course. My guess is that he's hiding something. Maybe he's hiding the fact that a free and open society should be able to tolerate a diversity of beliefs and practices, even when they are at odds with his contemptible ruminations—perhaps especially when they are at odds with his contemptible ruminations. Finally, any mistakes in this message are strictly my fault. But if you find any factual error or have more updated information on the subject of Mr. HopefulButConcerned101, HopefulButConcerned101-inspired versions of authoritarianism, etc., please tell me so we can discuss and debate.

[DMN]

Concerned shitizen.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Please refrain from fully-quoting the OP. Thanks!

[Vizax_Xaziv]

This is seal teams fault.

I couldn't agree more!

[Naerron]

i read the first sentence and realized this dude must be new to the community for 3 reasons..His post seemed genuine, overall post length, and it felt like they thought they'd be taken seriously in the RnF section of these forums.

These are the things I, a warrior of the 60th circle, have observed.

[Pozzey]

a warrior of the 60th circle

Lul... I love these guys.

[Hazek]

Like many of you, I am sick and tired of being misinformed and disinformed by Mr. HopefulButConcerned101. That's why I'm writing this, to bring meaning, direction, and purpose into our lives. Although the pressing need for encouraging open, civic engagement is acknowledged here, the main focus of this letter regards HopefulButConcerned101's desire to bar workers from participation in the social totality as fully developing individuals. Speaking of footling vermin, he is willing to promote truth and justice when it's convenient. But when it threatens his creature comforts, he throws principle to the wind. It's time for us to mobilize and speak up against his piteous hate sheets. Silence and apathy perpetuate the ignorance and obfuscate the fact that the reason HopefulButConcerned101 wants to perform the most inhumane acts of violence Norrath has ever seen is that he's completely obnoxious. If you believe you have another explanation for his semi-intelligible behavior, then please write and tell me about it.

I want my life to count. I want to be part of something significant and lasting. I want to explain why credentialism is a failed philosophy. (Hint: It's because it denies the realities of human nature and teaches that terrorism resonates with the body's natural alpha waves.)

According to the latest claims, if HopefulButConcerned101 would abandon his name-calling and false dichotomies it would be much easier for me to ensure that everyone knows that muting the voice of anyone who dares to speak out against HopefulButConcerned101 is a mug's game. The only reason he does things like that is because the emphasis his cajoleries place on personal victimization includes a refusal to hold obdurate, vapid dissemblers in any way responsible for their actions. Nevertheless, when it comes to accepting or rebuking his primitive, unruly missives, we are faced with the same choice that Moses gave Israel: good or evil, light or dark, life or death, freedom or slavery. One shouldn't need to think too hard about those options to realize that HopefulButConcerned101's ability to capitalize on the economic chaos, racial tensions, and social discontent of the current historical moment can be explained in large part by the following. HopefulButConcerned101's arguments would be a lot more effective if they were at least accurate or intelligent, not just a load of bull for the sake of being controversial.

Was HopefulButConcerned101 just trying to be cute when he said that he was there in Everquest when Leeroy did what he did? I sure hope so because if I am correctly informed, he always represents himself as the victim, as betrayed and sinned against, demeaned and tormented because of society's jealousy. In any case, a large number of people, myself included, figured HopefulButConcerned101 would never stoop so low as to institutionalize collectivism through systematic violence, distorted religion, and dubious science. Nevertheless, despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, he chose to do exactly that. As a result, I can safely say that HopefulButConcerned101 champions deconstructionism, exploitation, and imperialist war. That said, let me continue.

If I withheld my feelings on this matter, I'd be no less dishonest than HopefulButConcerned101. I have some of his incoherent press releases in front of me right now. In one of them, HopefulButConcerned101 avouches that he's the most recent incarnation of the Buddha. If you don't find that shocking then consider that thoughtful people are being forced to admit, after years of evading the truth, that I have been right. I was right when I said that it is an indisputable verity that I myself find HopefulButConcerned101's failed attempts to sacrifice children on the twin altars of elitism and greed mildly amusing. I was right when I said that my concern and outrage are not directed solely at HopefulButConcerned101, but at all those who seek to trick us into trading freedom for serfdom. And I was right when I said that I do not find press releases that are libidinous, discourteous, and vain to be “funny”. Maybe I lack a sense of humor, but maybe HopefulButConcerned101 avows that power, politics, and privilege should prevail over the rule of law. This fraud, this lie, is just one among the thousands he perpetrates.

One of the enduring effects of HopefulButConcerned101's polemics is the way they will impose hypocritical new restrictions on society just to satisfy some sort of morally reprehensible drive for power. Not only does HopefulButConcerned101 use scapegoating as a foil to draw anger away from more accurate targets, but he then commands his drudges, “Go, and do thou likewise.” Don't let yourself be buffaloed by him. Don't let yourself be persuaded to believe that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully just because a lot of philopolemical coofs happen to believe that. Analyze the arguments for yourself and see if you agree with my claim that HopefulButConcerned101 may unwittingly rob, steal, cheat, and murder. I say “unwittingly” because he is apparently unaware that he operates under the influence of a particular ideology—a set of beliefs based on the root metaphor of the transmission of forces. Until you understand this root metaphor you won't be able to grasp why HopefulButConcerned101 has abandoned ethics altogether. Disguised in this drollery is an important message: Conspiracy theories are HopefulButConcerned101's bread and butter, and the wilder, the better. His most outré claim is that everyone who scrambles aboard the HopefulButConcerned101 bandwagon is guaranteed a smooth ride. This claim sets a new standard for daffy, querulous tracts and shows how HopefulButConcerned101 has never had a single new idea. He has merely gussied up old concepts in new rhetoric, most recently in the meretricious jargon of cannibalism. This leads to an important point: I have a dream that my children will be able to live in a world filled with open spaces and beautiful wilderness—not in a dark, lazy world run by rash, shambolic moochers.

It doesn't really matter why HopefulButConcerned101 wants to rot out the foundations of our values. Whether it's due to a misplaced faith in WoW, bribes paid to HopefulButConcerned101 by rude, indelicate malcontents, or nagging from some of the chuffy, gutless loons in his club, the fact remains that that's what HopefulButConcerned101 wants. What I want, in contrast, is to notify you that while he's out conscripting traditional academic disciplines into the service of prætorianism and its ideological variants, the general public is shouldering the bill. Sadly, this is a bill of shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, depression and all its attendant miseries, and a despondency about HopefulButConcerned101's attempts to sell us fibs and fear mixed with a generous dollop of obscurantism. I am not going to go into too great a detail about eccentric, incorrigible wantwits, but be assured that his assumptions are matched in their untenability only by the arrogant fervor with which they are held. In the presence of high heaven and before the civilized world I therefore assert that every time he utters or writes a statement that supports Chekism—even indirectly—it sends a message that he has the linguistic prowess to produce a masterwork of meritorious literature. I avow that we mustn't let him make such statements, partly because it shocks my conscience to see him scorn and abjure reason, but primarily because he has been trying for quite some time to convince us that it is not only acceptable but indeed desirable to nurture and spread totalitarianism in our nation's heartland. I suggest he take this rotting ordure and dump it where he and his fellow homicidal dunces congregate. At least then we could keep our priorities in check without having to worry that he will lower scholastic standards.

HopefulButConcerned101 has compiled an impressive list of grievances against me. Not only are all of these grievances completely fictitious, but HopefulButConcerned101 says that he wants to make life better for everyone. Lacking a coherent ideology, however, HopefulButConcerned101 always ends up making our lives miserable. He claims that the rest of us are an inferior group of people, fit only to be enslaved, beaten, and butchered at the whim of our betters. Predictably, he cites no hard data for that claim. This is because no such data exist.

There is a war being fought in the unseen realm between the forces of good and evil, and the battlefield is your mind. The only way for us to win this war is to produce a compelling model of a society worth struggling for. In the absence of such a model, churlish tosspots typically retreat into specific cultural and ideological identity groups that make rights, status, and privilege claims on the basis of a victimized identity. If you think that HopefulButConcerned101 isn't planning on exploiting such identity groups, then consider that this whole discussion has turned into a war of words between a few people. I'll stand by that controversial statement and even assume that most readers who bring their own real-life experience will agree with it. At a bare minimum, HopefulButConcerned101's cold-blooded swampers like to shout, “Let's doctor evidence and classification systems and make hubristic generalizations to support haughty, preconceived views. That'll be wonderful. Hooray, hooray!” But that won't be wonderful. Rather, it'll organize a troika of base-minded yahoos, moralistic pipsqueaks, and batty scoundrels with the sole purpose of dissolving the bonds that join individuals to their natural communities.

Many people respond to HopefulButConcerned101's lily-livered schemes in the same way that they respond to television dramas. They watch them; they talk about them; but they feel no overwhelming compulsion to do anything about them. That's why I insist we teach people that HopefulButConcerned101 indisputably wants me to go into hiding. If I did, I'm sure the chortles from HopefulButConcerned101 and his lynch mob would be rich and prolonged, especially given how HopefulButConcerned101 has been implementing a disingenuous parody of justice called “HopefulButConcerned101-ism”. Should doing so buy HopefulButConcerned101 the right to dialogue, negotiation, concessions, and power? I say no because I would love to debate HopefulButConcerned101 about his views on immoralism. Alas, given how ill-prepared he is to win such a debate, he's been trying to suppress the debate before it can even occur. Such behavior tells us that HopefulButConcerned101 is a distasteful hedonist. Consequently, attempting to respond to his effusions with logic is futile. A more productive response is to observe that HopefulButConcerned101 is an expert at calming his opponents with sweet inversions of the truth. In case you don't believe me, consider how he has managed to convince an alarming number of people that trees cause more pollution than automobiles do. He does this even though he knows full well that he claims to have data supporting his assertion that he's God's chosen instrument to save our nation from impending doom. Naturally, he insists that he can't actually show us that data—for some unspecified reason, of course. My guess is that he's hiding something. Maybe he's hiding the fact that a free and open society should be able to tolerate a diversity of beliefs and practices, even when they are at odds with his contemptible ruminations—perhaps especially when they are at odds with his contemptible ruminations. Finally, any mistakes in this message are strictly my fault. But if you find any factual error or have more updated information on the subject of Mr. HopefulButConcerned101, HopefulButConcerned101-inspired versions of authoritarianism, etc., please tell me so we can discuss and debate.

huh, neat

[HopefulButConcerned101]

ahahahah that was great man!!
holy shit u made my day.

I'm gonna roll a Cannibal necro now.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

alright man, I admit it was a rant, I didn't spend anytime really caring about anything, and for the record..I am not touting accomplishments... its a video game. I was simply trying to illustrate that these things are what made EQ..EQ, and the nostalgia is nice, but vague. There are 50,000 things that were done first in this game, and as one of the original players, of course I did a few of them. There were some 20 servers, each with like 20k people on them, I was famous to the 2k I played with in my time frame, on that server. Libs need to stop projecting=) so they can understand what other people mean when they speak. I'm not writing a book, an op-ed or a speech here, I am under the influence of narcotics playing a video game. I really could give a sheet about a comma. This rant was not my resume, nor was it the script to a new and upcoming movie. It was a stoned guys reminiscence of something he had fun with 20 yrs ago. a rant and a plea about spawn points.

The thread is called "rants" its located in a video game forum, its not "apply here for employment at the writers guild."

I agree with your advice, I applied it my entire life when it mattered. This doesn't matter, its fantasy land.

Now hows some advice for you.. relax.

[Valeriya]

I'm not reading this......... fuck that

[Valeriya]

You just typed a thesis on the integrity of a digitized elf land, reconsider your life choices

#Nolifer

[HopefulButConcerned101]

lol its not "hitting me hard"

wtf is wrong with you people?

its just a rant

The other day this lady cut me off in traffic. Dumb bitch almost caused a wreck, and made me wait another 5 minutes at the traffic light!

its just a rant, it effected me emotionally for a moment, 3 nano seconds, I relate the story as small talk, as we are not designing rocket engines atm.

has it "hit me hard?"

lol, no.

[Valeriya]

lol its not "hitting me hard"

wtf is wrong with you people?

its just a rant

The other day this lady cut me off in traffic. Dumb bitch almost caused a wreck, and made me wait another 5 minutes at the traffic light!

its just a rant, it effected me emotionally for a moment, 3 nano seconds, I relate the story as small talk, as we are not designing rocket engines atm.

has it "hit me hard?"

lol, no.


Shut up

[HopefulButConcerned101]

there was no effort, I wasn't straining my brain to solve quantum irregularities, I wasn't straining my arms to lift 150lb couch. it was a rant about a few things on my mind while remembering a game i played a few decades ago

now that I have returned to video game world, I am seriously starting to understand why libs need safe spaces. for Christ sake lay of the emotion enhancing drugs they are fucking you guys up badly. I mean badly, real bad.

[Hazek]

there was no effort, I wasn't straining my brain to solve quantum irregularities, I wasn't straining my arms to lift 150lb couch. it was a rant about a few things on my mind while remembering a game i played a few decades ago

now that I have returned to video game world, I am seriously starting to understand why libs need safe spaces. for Christ sake lay of the emotion enhancing drugs they are fucking you guys up badly. I mean badly, real bad.

Ask yourself why you're replying to this thread. And i'll do the same.

[Valeriya]

I didnt even read it.... To post shit like that in RNF you make me sick

[Pozzey]

lol its not "hitting me hard"

wtf is wrong with you people?

its just a rant

The other day this lady cut me off in traffic. Dumb bitch almost caused a wreck, and made me wait another 5 minutes at the traffic light!

its just a rant, it effected me emotionally for a moment, 3 nano seconds, I relate the story as small talk, as we are not designing rocket engines atm.

has it "hit me hard?"

lol, no.

A+ please keep it up.

[Hazek]

Imagine if all the comments you read online were condensed in a book. How big would it be, what have you learned, and was it worth it?

[Valeriya]

Whoever made this thread is my enemy

[AgentEpilot]

It has the potential to be a decadent bowl of copy pasta.

[Valeriya]

It has the potential to be a decadent bowl of copy pasta.

You actually read this crap lol?

[TripSin]

... and for the record..I am not touting accomplishments... its a video game.

Except your entire first paragraph is you doing exactly that. Oh, right, I forgot. It's 2019, Trump is president, reality and facts don't matter anymore. You didn't spend an entire paragraph touting your "accomplishments" and it's not just sitting there for everyone to read. Carry on.

[Valeriya]

Except your entire first paragraph is you doing exactly that. Oh, right, I forgot. It's 2019, Trump is president, reality and facts don't matter anymore. You didn't spend an entire paragraph touting your "accomplishments" and it's not just sitting there for everyone to read. Carry on.

Who the fuck would read that Liberals!?

Delete this thread already

[Natewest1987]

Somehow I zoomed out before even scrolling down and I’m just like wtf is that

[Naonak]

Nice essay

Not happy playing "Their" game for free, stop playing?

[Naerron]

every singe time i come to this post i get closer to reading the OP...i'm starting to realize the genius at work here and it's...making me want to read...wtf

[OuterChimp]

I once stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

boredom

[HopefulButConcerned101]

that's your interpretation which we call projection. there are 2 sexes, get over it, not our fault you were born f'ed up, seek medial attention.

[HopefulButConcerned101]

happy with the game, its pretty decent, not happy with you, your garbage.

[Tethler]

that's your interpretation which we call projection. there are 2 sexes, get over it, not our fault you were born f'ed up, seek medial attention.

dude get off the comp and find a woman. you sit in here all day with nothing but trolling?

[Hibbs]

If I have to scroll wheel more than twice and there is still more post you lose. Onto the next. LOL

[Hazek]

I'm wealthy and retired but choose to get triggered by random people on forums.

[turbosilk]

Try red. It recreates that pvp environment you loved.

[Hyjalx]

If your looking for Trump's wall, look no further.

[Kron]

TLDR: He was the first of name, conquered what you plebs struggle with first, rivaled only by those who came 2nd and any time he falls from grace he quickly (like as in the next day) reclaims his title as the first.

He also has a little brother who came 2nd because clearly he was first.

[Carkle Jackson]

I wrote lots of stuff

Help me understand here…

So you have never played on any of the Project 1999 servers but all of a sudden you are completely knowledgeable about the state of the server as a whole? And if the server owners follow your advice, they may entice you to actually play on the server? A server upon which thousands of other people play without your proposed changes?

[Phaezed-Reality]

Didn't read but obviously it deserves a propper response. Because we are concerned that you are concerned, Our elite squad of dedicated scribes are on the case.

https://i.imgur.com/xhkth19.png

[entruil]

Concerned.... Lol phase u all reality Felix n shit... What did I get wrong lol... Gl

[entruil]

HF

[Kit]

ok boomer

[Canelek]

I don't think anyone that plays EQ is an actual bonafide baby-boomer, but some of you retards sure vote that way.

[Tethler]

I don't think anyone that plays EQ is an actual bonafide baby-boomer, but some of you retards sure vote that way.

I'm willing to bet that many of the longest of p99 neckbeards belong to retirees with too much time on their hands.

[Bisonzabi]

Except your entire first paragraph is you doing exactly that. Oh, right, I forgot. It's 2019, Trump is president, reality and facts don't matter anymore. You didn't spend an entire paragraph touting your "accomplishments" and it's not just sitting there for everyone to read. Carry on.

This is true. Dems can't handle the reality that Trump is President and the fact that Trump didn't do anything wrong :^)