VP Keys Quests should not be in game

[nphixion]

Hey folks,

GMs acknowledge that certain behaviors are detrimental to the server that are gained by foresight for what's to come. These behaviors/items they seek to control are not negative nor do they have malicious intent, but ultimately are controlled to maintain the spirit of classic EQ experience.

I believe the most infamous/famous example of this to be GM intervention to nerf the Gnoll Scroll experience - but there are other intentional decisions to stick to this server's scope of work.

That being said - I do not think that VP Keys should remain in game for this reason. No one, in true classic experience at this stage of Kunark, had any idea what VP was or what it would do, what loot benefits would wait. And even if they did, I think it is fair to say that they were no methods to mass produce VP keys.

I would hope that the GMs consider the precedent they've maintained to make this the best emulated everquest experience and remove the VP Key quest line and/or its no drops - from the game.

This is my perspective alone and not representative of my elf pals.

[Gustoo]

I relate to your statements here Nphixion. I think that the green server has been a bit of a hybrid mix of "true 99 style" experience meaning we get to use all our knowledge to totally decimate what was in 1999, and at the same time some adjustments were in place, like the list like the quest EXP nerf, and so on.

I don't think that VP keys are going to be removed or nerfed in any way at this phase of the game.

I do think that we should learn from the green server about how to make a further customized server that follows classic timeline with changes in place that remove some of the craziness (that destroys classic experience) we have seen on green, such as the VP key issues you are talking about here. There are always going to be some bottlenecks.

[Littlefinger]

Whats the issue with the VP key? Just that back in the day at this point people didn't know about?

[azxten]

Not classic but apparently that doesn't matter anymore. I do support added difficulty to P99. Currently P99 is actually much easier than live ever was due to non-classic bugs, decisions, etc.

Changes to VP and ST keys is likely worth doing to add significant difficulty. Either just general nerfs to drop rates or a new quest.

[Fammaden]

Did the quest for the key even exist this early in the expansion originally, before the zone was ever released? Doesn't seem much different than all the epic quest drops they deleted for the same reason.

[Nuggie]

Did the quest for the key even exist this early in the expansion originally, before the zone was ever released? Doesn't seem much different than all the epic quest drops they deleted for the same reason.

I find this very unlikely.

[NPC]

What? People crying because someone is going to beat them to VP an make their loot look like trash? VP was well known an touted as being the hardest raid zone in the game before Kunark was released. The only thing having people with VP keys does is open up more raid targets to spread out all those raiding guilds, so its not a bad thing. Its a good thing. Jesus H F-ing Christ, can man children quit crying about every little thing, just play the game or dont. The people that actually did play back in the day know this server is no where close to live in actual content, loot drop rates, zone populations, exp tables, nothing is right. Root was never this strong, so strong is makes mezz almost questionable. Spawn times were never so low corpses would still be rotting before the next spawn. 6 min spawn times? in every zone? LOL, there may have been like 1-2 spawns like that in the whole game. You have most zones with 6 min 40 sec spawn times, everyone knows thats wrong. Most spawn times were 12-15 min average. LOL, Green is everquest safe mode, sad thing is most don't even know it. They also added high ZEMs before they should have ever existed, should have been late Velious or even after that! That's what makes the quest exp nerfing so funny, like that REALLY did anything but punish new players. You worried about people leveling too fast why have ZEMs? Classic Everquest didn't have ZEM's, didn't have 6 min 40 sec spawn timers. Classic, I think not.

[nphixion]

(Gnoll scrolls were well known before kunark release.) not too sure what else NPC is talking about but you can start another thread elsewhere lol

[NPC]

(Gnoll scrolls were well known before kunark release.) not too sure what else NPC is talking about but you can start another thread elsewhere lol

ZEM = Zone Experience Modifiers, in the original game they put these in to make the old unused zones more popular during late Veilous or even later. Not sure the exact modifier, but essentially anything you killed in the zone would give you like 50-70% more experience. Green introduced these zone experience bonuses at the very beginning High Keep had a really high zone modifier early in green, later they nerfed the modifier. Other zones, upper guk, Cazic Thule, Gorge of king Xorb. These still have modifiers, currently the best I believe is Permafrost, think its + 100%, so you get double exp.
They have exp bonus zones, but they are worried about quest exp? It makes no sense.
Understand now?

[nphixion]

Sir this is a thread about VP Keys not ZEMs.

[azxten]

It would be interesting to see data on how many people on a given server had a VP key at Velious launch. I bet it was less than 50 on any live server. I bet some servers may have not had anyone get a key or not enough to conduct raids.

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/template.cgi?page=index_jun_dec00

November 11, 2000 Posted by Arele
Veeshan's Peak Cleared - Phara Dar Dead!
Afterlife cleared Veeshan's Peak this weekend, starting Friday night with the slaying of Silverwing. Saturday we reassembled to kill the rest of the dragons - Hoshkar, Xygoz, Druushk, and Nexona on the way to the big prize (and only dragon not yet defeated) Phara Dar herself.

September 9, 2000 Posted by Arele
Xygoz & Druushk Slain!
Two more mighty beasts of Veeshan's Peak fell tonight at the hands of Afterlife. This was also the first time on any server the dragon Xygoz has been killed!

Monday August 7th 2000 Posted by Thanotos
Afterlife's First VP Raid
Well, we went in today. We didn't do bad for the people we had, but will be needing a few more keys before we can really show VP who's boss. Here's a screenshot for you...
Veeshan's Peak

Sunday Jul 23'rd 2000 Posted by Thanotos
Afterlife enters VP
Delnatha entered VP today, and took a few screenshots, we're not quite ready to go in and show VP what we are made of yet... but it wont be long. Watch out Veeshan ;)

Afterlife didn't clear VP until November 11th.

Kunark releases April
Afterlife gets first VP key July
Afterlife first raid August
Afterlife global firsts August-Sept
Afterlife clears VP November
Velious releases December

So from this we know...

1. It took one of the best EQ guilds ever which was achieving global first kills about 4 months to get anyone a VP key. Was this due to lack of knowledge or was the quest not working?

2. From first key to first raid took 1 month but notes they're still short on keys. They likely had almost no competition for keys and only the drop rate was the limiting factor.

3. From almost raid force keyed to cleared took about 4 months.

4. The best guild possibly ever to exist in EQ was only able to clear VP when Velious was less than a month away from launching.

Like I said, I bet a LOT of servers may have had zero VP keys at Velious launch. Probably 95% of servers had not cleared VP when Velious launched.

I think VP key quest or VP difficulty should be modified to try to mimic this kind of time scale. VP should only be for the most neck bearded losers and it should involve true challenge probably through more powerful mobs.

It's abnormal to play a "classic" EQ server where by Velious launch probably 3-5 guilds will be easily able to clear it both in terms of keys and ability.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zones.html?zstrat=93&p=3#comments

In this dungeon no gm help is available even in the case of Link Death or server crashes!

This is kind of interesting. Should VP be a FFA zone? I've proposed this before, on live GMs did not participate in "lawyer quest" like they do on P99. Apparently someone calls this zone out as special which I vaguely remember. I wonder if on live training and other activity in VP would never be addressed by a GM.

I still think the problem is bigger than keys or mob difficulty. P99 is simply too easy. ZEMs shouldn't exist, channeling shouldn't be so successful, and so on. The player level curve here skews way too fast to the top end. In live only the most dedicated players could raid a given expansions end game content before the next expansion dropped. This was good because it kept guilds and players spread out throughout the game. On P99 bonus exp alone results in too many max level characters than should exist for the time period designed.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the best EQ guilds were only clearing VP 1-2 months before Velious released. It's because the game was DESIGNED to provide a challenge that was only just achievable given the expected duration of the expansion.

On P99 we're adhering to classic time scale but not designing the game to fit that time scale. Faster exp than classic but using a classic time scale results in content that becomes trivial too fast and a bottleneck forms causing player frustration.

Want faster exp rates? Great. Then expansions also need to release faster to maintain proper design.

[Gustoo]

Azxten we talk about these problems a lot.

The biggest issue is that we are going into these new progression servers with 20 years of experience and 10 whole years of Blue 99 experience meaning we are grizzled psychopaths at decimating this content.

I agree completely that the fact that so many people are maximum level on Project 1999 is very abnormal and is very unhealthy for the server, but I don't know how its possible to stop it.

1. Everyone can look up the best places to level
2. There are a lot of people that know all kinds of elite mechanics for maximum powerlevel speeds
3. A lot of people on Project 1999 came here to WIN not just to quest. They don't want to flounder around like they did when they were 13 years old.
4. The population is all in there 30's or so which also means they are at peak age to DESTROY a game like this. There are no 11 year olds (barely) and no 60 year olds (barely) and there were a lot of these on Live. The imbalance comes from the way hormones work on adolescents. People that played in middle school can't really shake this game or at least its very difficult to find a game that is as fun / enticing / addicting however you want to describe it for this population.

Only psychos even knew how to get into VP or that it existed. Only psychos got to 60 before velious. ANYONE in planar gear on live was really hardcore, let alone anyone with an item we consider BIS today. That stuff was entirely legendary and by the time people figured out the content, a new expansion opened up and people were going to the next thing.

That experience can't be replicated here.

I think the next progression server will simply have a progressive maximum level cap and we all level up together without a crazy rush to the top. Eventually it will be top level heavy but at least we can all journey together for a while.

Thats just my guess since it saves a lot of the toxic we have here now.

[cd288]

Hey folks,

GMs acknowledge that certain behaviors are detrimental to the server that are gained by foresight for what's to come. These behaviors/items they seek to control are not negative nor do they have malicious intent, but ultimately are controlled to maintain the spirit of classic EQ experience.

I believe the most infamous/famous example of this to be GM intervention to nerf the Gnoll Scroll experience - but there are other intentional decisions to stick to this server's scope of work.

That being said - I do not think that VP Keys should remain in game for this reason. No one, in true classic experience at this stage of Kunark, had any idea what VP was or what it would do, what loot benefits would wait. And even if they did, I think it is fair to say that they were no methods to mass produce VP keys.

I would hope that the GMs consider the precedent they've maintained to make this the best emulated everquest experience and remove the VP Key quest line and/or its no drops - from the game.

This is my perspective alone and not representative of my elf pals.

This isn’t really analogous to the summon corpse list situation. The summon corpse situation was a bunch of people who realized they could skip a good portion of a raid by farming this spell and trying to exploit it by monopolizing its for themselves. Contrast that with simply knowing something drops of X Y or Z. It’s not the same at all.

If your standard is “well people didn’t know about this as much back in the day” then we might as well modify literally everything on the server because everything is known as this point except new ways to exploit things like summon corpse. Knowing how something drops isn’t similar.

[nphixion]

This isn’t really analogous to the summon corpse list situation. The summon corpse situation was a bunch of people who realized they could skip a good portion of a raid by farming this spell and trying to exploit it by monopolizing its for themselves. Contrast that with simply knowing something drops of X Y or Z. It’s not the same at all.

If your standard is “well people didn’t know about this as much back in the day” then we might as well modify literally everything on the server because everything is known as this point except new ways to exploit things like summon corpse. Knowing how something drops isn’t similar.

It’s not analogous to the summon corpse situation which is why I didn’t bring it up. Thanks tho for your perspective.

[nphixion]

It would be interesting to see data on how many people on a given server had a VP key at Velious launch. I bet it was less than 50 on any live server. I bet some servers may have not had anyone get a key or not enough to conduct raids.

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/template.cgi?page=index_jun_dec00









Afterlife didn't clear VP until November 11th.

Kunark releases April
Afterlife gets first VP key July
Afterlife first raid August
Afterlife global firsts August-Sept
Afterlife clears VP November
Velious releases December

So from this we know...

1. It took one of the best EQ guilds ever which was achieving global first kills about 4 months to get anyone a VP key. Was this due to lack of knowledge or was the quest not working?

2. From first key to first raid took 1 month but notes they're still short on keys. They likely had almost no competition for keys and only the drop rate was the limiting factor.

3. From almost raid force keyed to cleared took about 4 months.

4. The best guild possibly ever to exist in EQ was only able to clear VP when Velious was less than a month away from launching.

Like I said, I bet a LOT of servers may have had zero VP keys at Velious launch. Probably 95% of servers had not cleared VP when Velious launched.

I think VP key quest or VP difficulty should be modified to try to mimic this kind of time scale. VP should only be for the most neck bearded losers and it should involve true challenge probably through more powerful mobs.

It's abnormal to play a "classic" EQ server where by Velious launch probably 3-5 guilds will be easily able to clear it both in terms of keys and ability.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zones.html?zstrat=93&p=3#comments



This is kind of interesting. Should VP be a FFA zone? I've proposed this before, on live GMs did not participate in "lawyer quest" like they do on P99. Apparently someone calls this zone out as special which I vaguely remember. I wonder if on live training and other activity in VP would never be addressed by a GM.

I still think the problem is bigger than keys or mob difficulty. P99 is simply too easy. ZEMs shouldn't exist, channeling shouldn't be so successful, and so on. The player level curve here skews way too fast to the top end. In live only the most dedicated players could raid a given expansions end game content before the next expansion dropped. This was good because it kept guilds and players spread out throughout the game. On P99 bonus exp alone results in too many max level characters than should exist for the time period designed.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the best EQ guilds were only clearing VP 1-2 months before Velious released. It's because the game was DESIGNED to provide a challenge that was only just achievable given the expected duration of the expansion.

On P99 we're adhering to classic time scale but not designing the game to fit that time scale. Faster exp than classic but using a classic time scale results in content that becomes trivial too fast and a bottleneck forms causing player frustration.

Want faster exp rates? Great. Then expansions also need to release faster to maintain proper design.

Thank you for your research and perspective. This time scale for Afterlife couldn’t more clearly illustrate the point of my post.

[Zipity]

Trak died within 24hrs of Kunark green release... everything is accelerated on this server due to vast knowledge of raid encounters and key spawns etc. If anything the afterlife post shows we should already be in VP killing dragons.

[cd288]

It’s not analogous to the summon corpse situation which is why I didn’t bring it up. Thanks tho for your perspective.

Weird I don’t know why I read summon corpse instead of gnoll scroll. Weed is interesting

[Scalem]

Trak died within 24hrs of Kunark green release... everything is accelerated on this server due to vast knowledge of raid encounters and key spawns etc. If anything the afterlife post shows we should already be in VP killing dragons.

Easy to kill Trak fast when you can just throw 100 plus bodies at it over and over. VP will be cleared as soon as ST has enough people keyed. Notice how Trak isn’t one of the open raids they are “gifting” the server?

[Imposter]

petition to remove VP key items until the true date they should arrive on the server, which would be the release of VP, or at the very least, the arrival of gorenaire/talendar/severilous.

[nphixion]

Easy to kill Trak fast when you can just throw 100 plus bodies at it over and over. VP will be cleared as soon as ST has enough people keyed. Notice how Trak isn’t one of the open raids they are “gifting” the server?

Not the point of the post but duly noted, lol.

My point for those new to the thread, which has been corroborated by posts in that era, is that it took Afterlife 4 months to get to VP. It will take 1 day on green. It would take one day for one person to get 1-60 on scrolls if the scrolls weren't nerfed or delayed 30 days. It will now take...Uh.. 4 months+ (for some of us, lol). It seems apples-to-apples as a behavior/timeline that the GMs would typically control.

[Phaezed-Reality]

I feel like we need one open raid on trak a week, so people who cant spend 500 hours on getting the keys have a fair shake at it.

[turbosilk]

I feel like we need one open raid on trak a week, so people who cant spend 500 hours on getting the keys have a fair shake at it.

Great idea. Please submit that for vote in the UN.

[Delekhan]

P99 Green is classic in all of the ways that matter. You aren't going to change the fact that human beings play this game and the techniques we use are constantly evolving. This is how it is for all games.

For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ2XWRpfEy8

Super Mario Bros current WR set 1 month ago. ~35 years of game mechanic knowledge has culminated into a full clear in 4:55.430.

[nphixion]

P99 Green is classic in all of the ways that matter. You aren't going to change the fact that human beings play this game and the techniques we use are constantly evolving. This is how it is for all games.

For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ2XWRpfEy8

Super Mario Bros current WR set 1 month ago. ~35 years of game mechanic knowledge has culminated into a full clear in 4:55.430.

I personally am not going to change how human beings play but GM’s have a track record of making content changes that uplift the spirit of classic Everquest - which I 100% support. I don’t know what’s classic about having 3+ groups of keys to a dungeon that doesn’t exist yet. it’s clear the experience in classic was far displaced along the classic timeline from being able to kill the dragons - let alone enter the dungeon per the evidence provided in this thread.

[Delekhan]

I personally am not going to change how human beings play but GM’s have a track record of making content changes that uplift the spirit of classic Everquest - which I 100% support. I don’t know what’s classic about having 3+ groups of keys to a dungeon that doesn’t exist yet. it’s clear the experience in classic was far displaced along the classic timeline from being able to kill the dragons - let alone enter the dungeon per the evidence provided in this thread.

Do you have definitive proof that it was impossible to get keys at this phase in the progression? Just because Afterlife figured it out on their own 20 years ago is not proof. That's an entirely different discussion, I don't think anyone in their right mind would suggest they artificially modify progression time frames to take into account the lack of game knowledge to simulate the natural discovery phase, which is clearly not the case here. There are hundreds if not thousands of examples where Green is fundamentally different due to players having acquired this knowledge over two decades at the onset.

[nphixion]

Do you have definitive proof that it was impossible to get keys at this phase in the progression? Just because Afterlife figured it out on their own 20 years ago is not proof. That's an entirely different discussion, I don't think anyone in their right mind would suggest they artificially modify progression time frames to take into account the lack of game knowledge to simulate the natural discovery phase, which is clearly not the case here. There are hundreds if not thousands of examples where Green is fundamentally different due to players having acquired this knowledge over two decades at the onset.

I understand what you’re saying. I don’t really think I need definitive proof. I dont think the GMs needed definitive proof that a person leveled to 60 on the first day of kunark in 2000 using gnoll scrolls. Yet the GMs nerfed gnoll scrolls in green.

The question to ask yourself is: is it okay to amass enough experience prior to kunark to go from 1-60 on day 1 of kunark? If your answer is no, then how is it okay to have keys to a dungeon prior to the dungeon existing?

[nphixion]

(Furthermore I’m having a tough time reconciling the natural discovery phase when there’s currently nothing to discover. It doesn’t exist yet)

[Delekhan]

I understand what you’re saying. I don’t really think I need definitive proof. I dont think the GMs needed definitive proof that a person leveled to 60 on the first day of kunark in 2000 using gnoll scrolls. Yet the GMs nerfed gnoll scrolls in green.

The question to ask yourself is: is it okay to amass enough experience prior to kunark to go from 1-60 on day 1 of kunark? If your answer is no, then how is it okay to have keys to a dungeon prior to the dungeon existing?

I don't think that's a fair comparison. They temporarily nerfed it to encourage people to play the game. The whole reason you can do the scroll trick in the first place is that you don't have to pay $10 a month for a subscription. Another fundamental difference. We all got to clear plane of sky before Kunark because we could create mage bot armies, which wasn't possible in classic unless you wanted to pay hundreds of dollars a month.

[Delekhan]

(Furthermore I’m having a tough time reconciling the natural discovery phase when there’s currently nothing to discover. It doesn’t exist yet)

If they knew about the key quest, every afterlife toon would have been keyed on launch.

[Bardp1999]

As someone who has spent hundreds of hours in VP I can safely tell you that you are not missing much. The time and effort is simply not worth it with Velious being just around the corner.

VP was cool on Blue because we were stuck there for 5 years, on Green I just dont see the point outside of the top raiding guild getting free loot 'so why not'.

It also feels very unclassic to be able to get keys to a zone that is not in game yet.

[Zipity]

Are you sure VP isn’t in game yet?
Could be no yellow text and people are just killing in there anonymously

[getsome]

VP should exist when kunark launches as in 2000.

[nphixion]

As someone who has spent hundreds of hours in VP I can safely tell you that you are not missing much. The time and effort is simply not worth it with Velious being just around the corner.

VP was cool on Blue because we were stuck there for 5 years, on Green I just dont see the point outside of the top raiding guild getting free loot 'so why not'.

It also feels very unclassic to be able to get keys to a zone that is not in game yet.

(For what it’s worth I’m also a person who has spent 100s of hours in VP.)

[nphixion]

Are you sure VP isn’t in game yet?
Could be no yellow text and people are just killing in there anonymously

Yes. VP doesn’t exist

[nphixion]

VP should exist when kunark launches as in 2000.

It’d be nice if it did but no, it shouldn’t. Good to see you tho Getsome 🥺

[reznor_]

Hey folks,

GMs acknowledge that certain behaviors are detrimental to the server that are gained by foresight for what's to come. These behaviors/items they seek to control are not negative nor do they have malicious intent, but ultimately are controlled to maintain the spirit of classic EQ experience.

I believe the most infamous/famous example of this to be GM intervention to nerf the Gnoll Scroll experience - but there are other intentional decisions to stick to this server's scope of work.

That being said - I do not think that VP Keys should remain in game for this reason. No one, in true classic experience at this stage of Kunark, had any idea what VP was or what it would do, what loot benefits would wait. And even if they did, I think it is fair to say that they were no methods to mass produce VP keys.

I would hope that the GMs consider the precedent they've maintained to make this the best emulated everquest experience and remove the VP Key quest line and/or its no drops - from the game.

This is my perspective alone and not representative of my elf pals.

And? The key pieces are /list. That mechanic sucks in itself. Would it make a big difference if the key quests weren't in until a February patch?

[Thulian]

i love how opening day of vp there will be a blob of players already keyed to go clear it in 2 hours

Lol

[reznor_]

i love how opening day of vp there will be a blob of players already keyed to go clear it in 2 hours

Lol

So according to OP, VP should not be in the game.

According to you, a bunch of players will have keys on VP release and clear it. Yes, probably.

Or, VP could have been opened coinciding with the medallion pieces dropping. Whats the best way, in your opinion, to make people the most miserable? PVP competition for the VP camps? Not /listing the VP pieces if VP opened the same time the stuff started to drop?

[nphixion]

And? The key pieces are /list. That mechanic sucks in itself. Would it make a big difference if the key quests weren't in until a February patch?

Would it make a big difference if a person leveled to 60 on day 1 of Kunark? I would say not. But despite what I say or think, the GMs didn’t believe that was in the spirit of classic. And I support their decisions.

Applying this same logic I fundamentally believe this is apples to apples to gnoll scrolls. And green should not have access to content that doesn’t exist yet. Content that - on classic - was proven to not be doable until some months post velious by the top guild.

[nphixion]

So according to OP, VP should not be in the game.

According to you, a bunch of players will have keys on VP release and clear it. Yes, probably.

Or, VP could have been opened coinciding with the medallion pieces dropping. Whats the best way, in your opinion, to make people the most miserable? PVP competition for the VP camps? Not /listing the VP pieces if VP opened the same time the stuff started to drop?

For the record, I’m not advocating for people to be miserable. I’m only advocating for a VP raiding scene that is consistent with classic Everquest. Similar to how at least 2 members of the P99 green community were manufacturing scrolls to level to 60 instantly, we shouldn’t have key manufacturing for a dungeon that doesn’t exist yet.

Also to remind folks, the point of this thread isn’t to speculate how to improve key manufacturing. But please feel free to make your own post!

[reznor_]

I would have been fine if the VP quest pieces weren't in game until VP launched. As long as Trakanon dropped his teeth. But I don't think that's how it was done on blue, and I'm assuming that was just a feature which was ported over here. Also, remember the timelines are really accelerated.

[Delekhan]

For the record, I’m not advocating for people to be miserable. I’m only advocating for a VP raiding scene that is consistent with classic Everquest. Similar to how at least 2 members of the P99 green community were manufacturing scrolls to level to 60 instantly, we shouldn’t have key manufacturing for a dungeon that doesn’t exist yet.

Also to remind folks, the point of this thread isn’t to speculate how to improve key manufacturing. But please feel free to make your own post!

Can you elaborate on this Scroll theory you have? I fail to understand how they are related. Scrolls theoretically can be used to cheese to 60 on Classic but nobody would pay $300 a month to hold on to scrolls so it's a moot point. The very fact that you can create an infinite number of free accounts makes that possible and the nerf necessary.

[Wfrench1234]

So...I was in Afterlife during Kunark (I was a Paladin named Caden...if you go back to the Afterlife website from 2000 you can see my Dark Elf mask Paladin corpse out in front of one of our first Trak kills. It took us awhile to key up for VP because we had no idea what to do to get keys. We knew trak teeth were for something...so we made sure our upper tier people had them (read: not paladins at first) but we weren’t working on the quest for the key actively and I’m almost positive the quest AND the related mobs like Verix were even in the game at Kunark launch. Our first real attempt at VP we got Silverwing down and had some close runs at Hoshkar. We got more people keys and eventually were able to throw enough bodies at each dragon to get them down, but yeah the whole process took about 4 months from when we started actively questing for keys (we had plenty of trak teeth prior), and as far as I know we got every single trak kill for at least the first 6 months of Kunark. The entire thing was such a slog I ended up quitting shortly after VP and didn’t look back until I found P99 in 2014. Hope this clears some stuff up.

[nphixion]

Can you elaborate on this Scroll theory you have? I fail to understand how they are related. Scrolls theoretically can be used to cheese to 60 on Classic but nobody would pay $300 a month to hold on to scrolls so it's a moot point. The very fact that you can create an infinite number of free accounts makes that possible and the nerf necessary.

GMs nerfed scrolls despite it being a moot point - to your point. Which is my point. My apologies in advance but you'd have to read my other points in this thread why I think the scroll nerf is so closely related to disallowing keys.

Perhaps the key items being removed from game that I'm suggesting is enough to stand on its own knowing that top guilds in Everquest Live were not able to progress in VP until post-Velious.

[nphixion]

So...I was in Afterlife during Kunark (I was a Paladin named Caden...if you go back to the Afterlife website from 2000 you can see my Dark Elf mask Paladin corpse out in front of one of our first Trak kills. It took us awhile to key up for VP because we had no idea what to do to get keys. We knew trak teeth were for something...so we made sure our upper tier people had them (read: not paladins at first) but we weren’t working on the quest for the key actively and I’m almost positive the quest AND the related mobs like Verix were even in the game at Kunark launch. Our first real attempt at VP we got Silverwing down and had some close runs at Hoshkar. We got more people keys and eventually were able to throw enough bodies at each dragon to get them down, but yeah the whole process took about 4 months from when we started actively questing for keys (we had plenty of trak teeth prior), and as far as I know we got every single trak kill for at least the first 6 months of Kunark. The entire thing was such a slog I ended up quitting shortly after VP and didn’t look back until I found P99 in 2014. Hope this clears some stuff up.


Thank you for this anecdote! I'm very grateful to the community producing these tidbits of information. Totally exceeds my expectations. Again, the point of this thread is to remind folks that GMs have made modifications to this server to mimic the classic experience. The GMs didn't see how leveling 1-60 in one day as an Iksar would be classic so they nerfed scrolls. I am pleading the GMs to consider if manufacturing keys for a dungeon that doesn't exist yet is truly classic.

Based on the anecdotes shared from people in <Afterlife> or snippets from guild marketing (etc), its clear that the top guilds in the early 2000s were not farming keys for their toons prior to VP release. I don't think that farming keys should be allowed here.

[getsome]

VP zone was launched with kunark.

[Thulian]

you guys realize this was created from a copy of titanium and every single little thing has to be deleted out right?

[nphixion]

VP zone was launched with kunark.

VP was released June 2000 which is not the Kunark expansion release date. Can’t make this stuff up.

[nphixion]

you guys realize this was created from a copy of titanium and every single little thing has to be deleted out right?

No idea. I’m a civil engineer 😂

[getsome]

Screenshots of VP were posted by rogue GM/Guide as early as April 2000.

[kjs86z]

consider blue

[Zwieback]

yea delete all the tooths.