Class numbers on Green post Teal.

[slowpoke68]

Taken 2 PM cst while soloing on my warrior (had plenty of time on my hands). Characters level 5+

Druid 88
Shaman 88
Enchanter 74
Necro 70
Cleric 68
Warrior 50
Mage 49
Sk 39
Monk 36
Bard 34
Paladin 24
Ranger 24
Wizard 19
Rogue 17

[jacob54311]

I'm surprised there are so many mages.

Wonder if a lot of them don't know about the situation with higher level pet spells.

[WaffleztheAndal]

I'm surprised there are so many mages.

Wonder if a lot of them don't know about the situation with higher level pet spells.

Most of the ones I have talked to thought that the nerf everyone’s been going on about was having only 1 or 2 Mage pets per level on a vendor. They were incredulous and skeptical when I told them there’s straight up no pets on a vendor after 20.

[WaffleztheAndal]

I'm surprised there are so many mages.

Wonder if a lot of them don't know about the situation with higher level pet spells.

You see the guy offering 300 plat for coercion (29 Mage pet words) in the Green/Teal trade forum?

Fucking madness lol

[Swish]

Surprised at the low rogue numbers, still good dps and welcome in any group I'm running :p

[Wurl]

I just want to say thanks for this post! The info is appreciated.

[slowpoke68]

I just want to say thanks for this post! The info is appreciated.

Like I say soloing and working on bind wound on a 19 warrior...lots of downtime haha.

[whitebandit]

now lets see some Teal Numbers with the same criteria!

[oldhead]

anyone got teals numbers? Should be easy to get. lol

[Noselacri]

Surprised at the low rogue numbers, still good dps and welcome in any group I'm running :p

It's fucking dogshit without evade. Only like 10% of groups have a hybrid tank, and backstab aggro means warriors have no chance whatsoever of holding aggro. Even paladins have to work hard at times because FoL is the worst of the snap-aggro spells. Backstab aggro is huge and there's just nothing you can really do about it until evade is implemented. Keeping every mob rooted 100% of the time is total aids and people don't do it.

[Swish]

It's fucking dogshit without evade. Only like 10% of groups have a hybrid tank, and backstab aggro means warriors have no chance whatsoever of holding aggro. Even paladins have to work hard at times because FoL is the worst of the snap-aggro spells. Backstab aggro is huge and there's just nothing you can really do about it until evade is implemented. Keeping every mob rooted 100% of the time is total aids and people don't do it.

Just needs a courtesy root from one of hte many casters around, even the cleric benefits if you can talk them into it.

[pink grapefruit]

It's fucking dogshit without evade. Only like 10% of groups have a hybrid tank, and backstab aggro means warriors have no chance whatsoever of holding aggro. Even paladins have to work hard at times because FoL is the worst of the snap-aggro spells. Backstab aggro is huge and there's just nothing you can really do about it until evade is implemented. Keeping every mob rooted 100% of the time is total aids and people don't do it.

Can confirm lol.

Rogue without evade is true classic hardmode.

[Pilgrimzero]

And you don’t even get backstab until 10. Until then you’re a half-baked Warrior.

[ScottyC33]

And to top off the shit sandwich, they have pretty much the most boring playstyle in the game.

[Purplefluffy]

It's fucking dogshit without evade. Only like 10% of groups have a hybrid tank, and backstab aggro means warriors have no chance whatsoever of holding aggro. Even paladins have to work hard at times because FoL is the worst of the snap-aggro spells. Backstab aggro is huge and there's just nothing you can really do about it until evade is implemented. Keeping every mob rooted 100% of the time is total aids and people don't do it.

This is not true. A Rogue can manage aggro and even at lvl 13 hide and disengaging still works.

[Isomorphic]

You see the guy offering 300 plat for coercion (29 Mage pet words) in the Green/Teal trade forum?

Fucking madness lol

300 is dirt cheap

[kaluppo]

I found it amazing that on off hours there was over 1100 people on green (this was at about 3 pm cst today when I logged into teal. But your numbers show me exactly why I left green and went to teal. Look at that druid, Shaman, cleric population. Three of the highest numbers on your list.

Too many healers trying to get the same group spots while too few tanks to tank for said groups. But that's classic for you. Nobody wants to be SK or pally cause of XP penalty and only so many people want to roll a warrior.

[opticalshadow]

As a now 12 rogue, i can say a few reasons why id guess people dont play them much.

-Low income potential, hard to deal with.
-Until lvl 10, were not even a real class, we dont contribute anything to a group more then anyone else in melee, which is incredibly boring and not easy to get a group as.
-Tanks have a real hard time holding aggro, SK has so far been my best luck on that, or casters who over cast
-cant really solo early, hard to get groups who basically want you as a liability, which means until 10, its a real boring life.

I like my rogue, but ive also accepted atleast so far in my career im a really bad offtank at time. Hide/Sneak/Disengage works. . . sometimes. Its better then nothing, but it takes the tank a good while to earn enough aggro before i can jump back in. sub 20, i honestly dont think many people care about our DPS. Getting another necro/mage in the group is just generally safer. I imagine after pet problems catch up with them, ill be far more desired.

SK is my second class, the only reason im not maining it is because since basically the launch of EQ, i have almost exclusively played DE SK's and wanted to try something new. Tanks are a problem. Warriors cant hope to hold my BS aggro, it hasnt been a huge issue so far, hunting orcs which are not the most threatening thing. But i do worry about some of the future content.

[Bazia]

i dropped my rogue at 12 because there was no tanks leveled past 10 at the time and i was chasing snared shit in every group

ill pick it back up in another week or two

[Calyps0]

I've been stuck at level 8 with my rogue trying to get a group in BB. Either groups are full of they are soloing in the upper level. The stuff just outside cons mostly green. It takes way too long trying to pick single targets and then I spend most time recovering my hp. I decided to create an alt that can at least solo and am sure will surpass my rogue. I know we're a long way to Kunark, but damn this is testing my patience with little time I have to play per day.

[GhostCow]

Head to WK. Never had a problem getting bandit groups

[oldhead]

This thread turned into how bad rogs suck lol

[oldhead]

Taken 2 PM cst while soloing on my warrior (had plenty of time on my hands). Characters level 5+

Druid 88
Shaman 88
Enchanter 74
Necro 70
Cleric 68
Warrior 50
Mage 49
Sk 39
Monk 36
Bard 34
Paladin 24
Ranger 24
Wizard 19
Rogue 17

Teal from another thread.

Enchanter 100
Druid 89
Necro 81
Shaman 77
Mage 65
Cleric 54
Bard 39
Warrior 35
Monk 34
Wizard 33
Shadow Knight 31
Rogue 29
Paladin 23
Ranger 19

[Siege]

Most of the ones I have talked to thought that the nerf everyone’s been going on about was having only 1 or 2 Mage pets per level on a vendor. They were incredulous and skeptical when I told them there’s straight up no pets on a vendor after 20.

I'm on farm mode with my mage. I plan on parking him at level 24 and twinking a melee class until they add pets to the vendors. I'd wager I'm not the only one.

[WaffleztheAndal]

I'm on farm mode with my mage. I plan on parking him at level 24 and twinking a melee class until they add pets to the vendors. I'd wager I'm not the only one.

I probably should have done this, but I figured I’d try and make the current system work. It’s not going well...

[Sarkhan]

It's fucking dogshit without evade. Only like 10% of groups have a hybrid tank, and backstab aggro means warriors have no chance whatsoever of holding aggro. Even paladins have to work hard at times because FoL is the worst of the snap-aggro spells. Backstab aggro is huge and there's just nothing you can really do about it until evade is implemented. Keeping every mob rooted 100% of the time is total aids and people don't do it.

flash of light is the worst? I personally believe FoL is the best low level agro. its been pulling agro better than my rangers flame lick not to mention you can use it to build agro on mezzed mobs without breaking Mez because there is no dot component. A good Paladin can lock down agro on more mobs than he can realistically tank. Not to mention root splitting... God I miss my pally now.

[slowpoke68]

I don't know what people are talking about that there are no tanks. Yesterday I could not buy a group on my 19 warrior. This morning has been the same. Trying to hit 20 soloing crocs and caiman.

My one group yesterday was a disaster in Runnyeye followed by an ok session in the Gorge, other than that have been solo on Green for last 24 hours.

[Khorza]

I'm surprised there are so many mages.

Wonder if a lot of them don't know about the situation with higher level pet spells.

There were less Mages than Warriors. When blue launched, there were easily 2x as many Mages as Warriors. There's been a significant drop off.

[Noselacri]

When blue launched, mage pets were also obscenely broken, and they didn't cut your XP in half when solo. Don't chalk the whole thing up to pet research, mages were bizarrely overpowered at P99 launch. They've been nerfed a number of times since.

[deadlycupcakez]

checked teal last night for highs and lows. As expected, popular classes like druids, mages, shaman, enchanters and necros were around 50 give or take 5, with druids actually being the highest.

The lowest pop were wizards with 12, then rangers with 14 then rogues with 20. This was probably a timing thing, and not during peak bc i wasnt home until late. But all in all, it is what would be expected.

[Pilgrimzero]

If I can just get to 10 with my Rogue! I may have to spend the few plat I have to for Crush Belts to get me partly there...

[Raclen]

I'm 11 on my rogue and have just been soloing most of my exp. The groups I have been in have been slower than my solo exp but I still always jump in groups if I can. If you find a perfect group like warrior/cleric/rogue I can see it being much better but most groups sprinkled with hybrids and poor class make ups will be slower.

I would just try to progress anyway you can. Worrying about being super efficient will cause burnout. As long as you are progressing. Look for group and solo while you wait.

Another thing about being lower level that people don't fully understand is how total exp earned effects your share of exp. It can really effect a rogue poorly at low level if you are several levels lower than a hybrid for instance. Instead of getting 1/6 the exp off a mob in a full group you might be getting 1/10. Normally killing solo you can kill 1 mob for every 10 a full group can since there aren't a ton of mobs available all the time.

I'm not saying avoid hybrid groups, but don't worry if you have to solo a bit while waiting for a group, it wont' be much worse even though you have a lot of downtime.

[QFuzzle]

When does Evade get implemented?

[korzax]

April 29, 1999 News Bit from John Smedley

I think you will find now that the packet loss should be basically gone... at least on our end. We were definetely causing some of the loss before (only when we hit major numbers) but now things are very, very clean running and that is with 23,582 people on just as I write this (a new record).

https://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes#April_28.2C_1999_Patch_Message

At that time there were 27 servers according to this page.

http://www.zlizeq.com/Game_Information-Servers_and_Versions

That means that at launch there were less than 1000 people each on the 26 servers available.

[cd288]

April 29, 1999 News Bit from John Smedley

I think you will find now that the packet loss should be basically gone... at least on our end. We were definetely causing some of the loss before (only when we hit major numbers) but now things are very, very clean running and that is with 23,582 people on just as I write this (a new record).

https://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes#April_28.2C_1999_Patch_Message

At that time there were 27 servers according to this page.

http://www.zlizeq.com/Game_Information-Servers_and_Versions

That means that at launch there were less than 1000 people each on the 26 servers available.

He means there were 23,582 people actively logged in at the time he was writing that message. Verant confirmed that by April 7, 1999 they had at least 60,000 subscribers. So that would be 2,300 per server on average (although of course it varied based on the server, with some being higher and some lower; IIRC from launch at the time, it really varied hugely from server to server...I think a couple only had a few hundred on for quite awhile whereas others were much larger lol).

[Llandris]

Subscribers =/= active players. We had over 1 million characters created but only had an active player base of about 1200 prior to Green/Teal launch. I expect more of an even shift the closer we get to the 2 week period where the /move option ends.

[cd288]

Subscribers =/= active players. We had over 1 million characters created but only had an active player base of about 1200 prior to Green/Teal launch. I expect more of an even shift the closer we get to the 2 week period where the /move option ends.

True. But Brad confirmed in the past that in the pre-Kunark era average active player population per server was over 2k within a couple months of original EQ launch

[Bazia]

my server was 700 so not sure what your smoking there bud, it didn't even pass 1k until halfway through kunark

[cd288]

my server was 700 so not sure what your smoking there bud, it didn't even pass 1k until halfway through kunark

That's why we use the term average :)

[korzax]

True. But Brad confirmed in the past that in the pre-Kunark era average active player population per server was over 2k within a couple months of original EQ launch

Source

[Lone Gnome]

coercion is probably the most common words, start exping in places like upper guk and youll be in word heaven, no idea why so many people made warriors, and no idea why wizards are on the bottom, conflag is insane dps

[cd288]

Source

It was in an interview or post he did awhile back. I'll try and find it later today

[sentinel]

Both servers are healthy and it has been like three days jfc

[Siege]

April 29, 1999 News Bit from John Smedley

I think you will find now that the packet loss should be basically gone... at least on our end. We were definetely causing some of the loss before (only when we hit major numbers) but now things are very, very clean running and that is with 23,582 people on just as I write this (a new record).

https://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes#April_28.2C_1999_Patch_Message

At that time there were 27 servers according to this page.

http://www.zlizeq.com/Game_Information-Servers_and_Versions

That means that at launch there were less than 1000 people each on the 26 servers available.

There were 750 people on Xegony when I rolled there on launch day.

[douglas1999]

I definitely remember thinking "wow my server has almost the same pop as my highschool" shortly after the game came out. My school had 2400 students

[Vidar]

Most of the ones I have talked to thought that the nerf everyone’s been going on about was having only 1 or 2 Mage pets per level on a vendor. They were incredulous and skeptical when I told them there’s straight up no pets on a vendor after 20.

cry me a river mages have to research a pet spell. boo hoo

[Swish]

That'll teach them mage kids not to let melees into their pet groups. Enjoy your research and future CotH bot status ;)

[Baler]

Green as of this post

Enchanter: 132
Magician: 99
Necromancer: 118
Wizard: 42
Cleric: 100
Druid: 183
Shaman: 110
Bard: 63
Monk: 64
Ranger: 36
Rogue: 57
Paladin: 53
Shadow Knight: 38
Warrior: 85

[WaffleztheAndal]

cry me a river mages have to research a pet spell. boo hoo

You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

[Baler]

Green as of this post

Enchanter: 72
Magician: 65
Necromancer: 63
Wizard: 22
Cleric: 60
Druid: 75
Shaman: 75
Bard: 38
Monk: 39
Ranger: 14
Rogue: 29
Paladin: 21
Shadow Knight: 32
Warrior: 45

[bolobaby]

Yeah! I'm playing a Ranger and few others are. That means I'll be... uh... a HOT commodity, right? Right? RIGHT???

[Pilgrimzero]

The amount of Enchanters is fugging hilarious.

[bwe]

This many enchanters is not classic

[Palemoon]

charm breaks need to happen waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than they do

[cd288]

charm breaks need to happen waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than they do

Is there evidence of this? To my knowledge, the Charm mechanic is accurate on P99. Each tick it runs through 3 saves you have to make: (i) your level versus the mob's level, (ii) mob's MR, and (iii) your charisma.

Number (i) above actually means Charm is pretty unreliable in the teens and, at times, early 20s (depending on the content you're doing in the early 20s). In the teens it's actually pretty tough to Charm kill reliably as a solo leveling method because it breaks so frequently. During that level range, the level difference between you and a blue con mob is much smaller, so the chance for Charm breaking is pretty high. At higher levels it's much easier to avoid a break because a blue con mob could be several levels lower than you (not to mention you probably have gear at that point that's boosting your CHA). This is classic AFAIK.

[Bazia]

way more reliable than live which is why you never saw it being used

[cd288]

way more reliable than live which is why you never saw it being used

Curious where the information on this is? Not trying to argue about it, actually curious where the proof is since I'd be interested to read about the old mechanics.

How else would you make Charm break other than those three saves I mentioned in my post?

[Palemoon]

(ii) mob's MR This is classic AFAIK.


Here is your problem. The mobs MR across the board is far too low.

[Tecmos Deception]

way more reliable than live which is why you never saw it being used

Never? I'll assume you're just exaggerating because you don't have a better argument than making shit up.

But charm being less widely used on live than on here is far from conclusive that it is too strong here. There are lots of mechanics on p99 that we know are classic mechanics but that were not widely used on live because people just didn't know about it. Maybe it IS too strong here, but you aren't proving it by any stretch.

[Vexenu]

I don't know how anyone can think charm here is remotely classic. Like do you really think if Enchanters were doing the ridiculous stuff they can on P1999 during the classic era that they wouldn't have been nerfed into the ground? That Verant/Sony would have been cool with a class designed to primarily CC and buff also having the DPS and tanking ability of multiple other players through a fairly reliable charm mechanic? Obviously not. Enchanter charm in classic was more like an extended Bard charm, used more as a form of CC to temporarily get a mob to tank and add some DPS, with the expectation that it would likely break within 30 sec or a minute. It's just far too reliable on P1999 and makes Enchanters super OP.

[Tecmos Deception]

I don't know how anyone can think charm here is remotely classic. Like do you really think if Enchanters were doing the ridiculous stuff they can on P1999 during the classic era that they wouldn't have been nerfed into the ground? That Verant/Sony would have been cool with a class designed to primarily CC and buff also having the DPS and tanking ability of multiple other players through a fairly reliable charm mechanic? Obviously not. Enchanter charm in classic was more like an extended Bard charm, used more as a form of CC to temporarily get a mob to tank and add some DPS, with the expectation that it would likely break within 30 sec or a minute. It's just far too reliable on P1999 and makes Enchanters super OP.

I used charm back in the day and it worked better than "an extended bard charm." And that was with an idiot-teenager's y2k knowledge of how to play an enchanter. I didn't keep multiple stuns loaded. I didn't know what level mobs were besides "blue it's lower than I am." If I grouped with a sham, I didn't ask for malo on pets too. I did gear for max charisma back in the day, fwiw, but I didn't stack hp and ac when I could to help survive charm breaks.

But yeah. As with Bazia, your reasoning doesn't necessarily follow. No, they wouldn't have designed chanter to do all this stuff on purpose. But they OBVIOUSLY didn't know wtf they were doing with design and only realized stuff needed changes when it became apparent through gameplay. If it took years for a significant number of people to really start making the most of charm, go figure it took years before they changed it. I still clearly remember charm being OP as fuck during exp in the planes. Plane of valor I think? Charming those rock dudes and using them as DPS while sitting on a horsey a ways away since they didn't summon? They did more dps than the rest of my groups and weren't difficult to manage compared to pets on p99. But most people were lazy or bad... they were rocking dire charmed pets that hit like wet noodles but didn't need any effort at all to maintain.


edit - lol. really. the idea of trying to say "would the devs really have done x? that's a horrible idea. of course they wouldn't have" is just so fucking ludicrous. They are the poster children for stupid balance choices. You can't use 2019 MMO player knowledge of MMO balance and attribute it to the devs of classic EQ ever. Lol.

[dekova]

Seems like every thread turns into either:

A fight about how classic shit is.
A fight about charm being overpowered.
A fight about ogre stun immunity.

Looks like we've hit two out of three so far.


So back on topic, does anyone have the time to do some counts on green and teal today so we can compare numbers? Would love to see counts by class and by level taken at relatively the same time. I would do it myself but am running for a plane.

[WaffleztheAndal]

way more reliable than live which is why you never saw it being used

Where are Skorge and Dolalin when you need to ruin a class. Come on boys duty calls!

[bolobaby]

Seems like every thread turns into either:

A fight about how classic shit is.
A fight about charm being overpowered.
A fight about ogre stun immunity.

Looks like we've hit two out of three so far.


So back on topic, does anyone have the time to do some counts on green and teal today so we can compare numbers? Would love to see counts by class and by level taken at relatively the same time. I would do it myself but am running for a plane.

Wait, wait, wait... does Godwin's Law apply here, too?

[cd288]

Here is your problem. The mobs MR across the board is far too low.

Is there evidence of this? Again, I'd love to see it if there is because that would be really interesting. The thing with mob stats and abilities is that for something like that the staff (I'm assuming) really needs specifics in order to make changes, because it's such a major part of the game that to change it without specific data as to what it was in 1999 isn't really something you could do.

Are you sure it's that the mob's MR is too low and not that people are just way smarter about using Tash these days? The whole Charm killing strategy has been so fleshed out step-by-step that it's possible people think Charm broke/was more dangerous back in the day when really the danger/break frequency was simply due to people not knowing how to maximize every little piece of the strategy to the utmost.


I used charm back in the day and it worked better than "an extended bard charm." And that was with an idiot-teenager's y2k knowledge of how to play an enchanter. I didn't keep multiple stuns loaded. I didn't know what level mobs were besides "blue it's lower than I am." If I grouped with a sham, I didn't ask for malo on pets too. I did gear for max charisma back in the day, fwiw, but I didn't stack hp and ac when I could to help survive charm breaks.

But yeah. As with Bazia, your reasoning doesn't necessarily follow. No, they wouldn't have designed chanter to do all this stuff on purpose. But they OBVIOUSLY didn't know wtf they were doing with design and only realized stuff needed changes when it became apparent through gameplay. If it took years for a significant number of people to really start making the most of charm, go figure it took years before they changed it. I still clearly remember charm being OP as fuck during exp in the planes. Plane of valor I think? Charming those rock dudes and using them as DPS while sitting on a horsey a ways away since they didn't summon? They did more dps than the rest of my groups and weren't difficult to manage compared to pets on p99. But most people were lazy or bad... they were rocking dire charmed pets that hit like wet noodles but didn't need any effort at all to maintain.


edit - lol. really. the idea of trying to say "would the devs really have done x? that's a horrible idea. of course they wouldn't have" is just so fucking ludicrous. They are the poster children for stupid balance choices. You can't use 2019 MMO player knowledge of MMO balance and attribute it to the devs of classic EQ ever. Lol.

I agree with this. The fact of the matter is that the Charm killing strategy we see today has been min/maxed as much as it possibly can. People simply didn't realize it could be such an amazing strategy back in the day.

[dekova]

Wait, wait, wait... does Godwin's Law apply here, too?

Shut up you damned Nazi.