Dwarves vs Elves - Custom Faydwer PvP

[azxten]

Working on a new PvP server. The premise is Dwarves vs Elves on Fawdwer only with some custom addition of classic dungeons and raid mobs.

Rules (need feedback):

1. Two teams (Human/Dwarf/Gnome vs High Elf/Wood Elf/Half Elf/Dark Elf)

Why? This allows for team balance outside the typical Faydwer races. Humans allow Bard/Ranger/Druid/SK and Dark Elf allows Necro/SK.

2. No shaman OR Dwarf and Half Elf Shaman

Why? Otherwise we might as well just add all the races which loses some of the Dwarf v Elf focus. A lot of players probably want to play Shaman so it could be added a custom class for other races.

3. Coin loot

Why? People don't like punishments for PvP death. A lot of PvP players love full loot, item loot, exp loss, etc but this limits the player base to a small niche who will tolerate such extreme loss on PvP death. The intent is to appeal to a wider range of players.

4. Fast exp

Why? Lessens commitment for new players to be able to contribute to PvP on a peer level with older players.

5. No level range for PvP

Why? Creates more of a team atmosphere where you rely on your team mates always. A level 1 spamming snare on a level 50 should have a chance for the spell to land even if it's small.

6. Scaled PvP damage to allow lower/higher levels to have fairer fights while still having a power differential

Why? Same as no level range, more of a team atmosphere. Allows new players to quickly be capable of holding their own in fights or at least being able to escape instead of being steamrolled in one spell.

7. PvP death sends you to a team city, can't gate for 5 minutes after (stop bind rushing)

Why? With only coin loot there is minimal punishment for dying in PvP. The only punishment is the corpse run and this should be equal for melee/casters and some guaranteed distance away from likely PvP areas.

8. No cross team trading, guilding, beneficial spells, or language. Dwarvish (Dwarf/Gnome/Human) and Elvish (High Elf/Wood Elf/Half Elf/Dark Elf) are mastered at start by the races on those teams. Languages can be learned over time.

Why? More emphasis on separation between teams, less griefing especially for new players who won't be able to understand the enemy, and avoid the overpowered cross team guilds healing your enemies during fights and such.

9. Instanced dueling/team fights possibly for PvP points to be spent in some way

Why? This lets new players of EQ PvP the opportunity to practice fighting quickly and learn skills required to successfully fight in open world without becoming annoyed by how much they would die otherwise having no opportunity to learn except for a brief fight between corpse runs.

10. Each team has a capital city that is safe for their team and is where they can join instanced duels.

Why? Casual players like safe zones, this is the minimum we could offer. Another potential safe zone would be a trade area where teams can trade between each other and possibly languages spoken in that zone are clear. Haven't decided if this is worthwhile yet or if teams should be expected to only trade between each other or drop trade between teams if players can speak each others languages or otherwise work out deals.

Map (need feedback):

Base map - Unrest in water area of yard there is a little cave that will zone to Najena, within Najena is a wall with magic symbols that looks like a door but goes nowhere which zones to Sol A, Sol A/B connect as normal, and back in Unrest near ghost spawn is an entryway that goes nowhere which zones to Sol B. In Crushbone near back of zone there is a piece of wall cut out like a cave but shallow which would be the zone to Guk Top which zones to Guk Bottom as normal. In Butcher on the shore somewhere would be a clickable item zone to Blackburrow, within Blackburrow there is an empty room with some cool hangings on the walls which would have a clickable zone to Paw, within Paw would be a zone to Cazic Thule. Permafrost is a clickable access zone in Steamfont maybe in the Minotaur caves.

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

Team influence - This shows general team influence over areas and the most common paths teams would run between areas. Dwarves would obviously sometimes want to go to Guk and Elves would want to go to Solusek as an example but this isn't shown because those are "risky" zones for them since their enemy team has closer city spawns than they do making those zones easier for their teams to control in general.

https://i.imgur.com/1XFTzs9.png

Custom paths/ports/city - Extended path to avoid lfay/gfay bottleneck and advantage to elf team who would otherwise control this critical bottleneck. We add a clickable zone item to Butcher/Steamfont that allows an alternative route to the Dwarf team and roughly the same 1 zone separation for the teams that the Elf team has. Also add a Wizard port to Cauldron and a Druid port to Guk. The Wizard port makes Wizards more useful and gives the Elf team the ability to quickly travel to Cauldron and adjacent zones in a similar way Dwarf team Wizards could port to GFay. We also add a Druid port into Guk to balance the Wizard port to Cazic Thule. This makes ports valuable utility spells even on this small continent. The Dark Elf camp in lfay becomes a slightly larger custom camp where Dark Elf players start possibly with some custom level 1-5 mobs for them to level on before traveling elsewhere. Bank, vendor, spells, trainers, etc. This prevents the elf team from all starting in essentially one zone together and forces some distance similar to Kaladim to Akanon.

https://i.imgur.com/CJv15J0.png

[Jibartik]

Im touching myself.

[Tradesonred]

Its a great idea to reduce the size of the world while keeping some dungeons accessible, remedying to game being made for when you /who'd 50 players in a zone.

[azxten]

Instead of Steamfont to Permafrost it should go Steamfont to Runnyeye to Permafrost. I forgot about runny and this also provides better separation between a zone with steam and a frozen cave. Pulling all the classic dungeons in helps with itemization. I think the only thing missing now would be like Kerra Island and Befallen. Nothing too serious missing there I think.

The server isn't Counter Strike friendly enough. I'm thinking skills and spells should auto train as you level. I had an idea for auto loot too but that gets a lot more complicated so probably not.

Scaling for PvP needs to maintain a sense of power connected to your level while still allowing lower levels a sporting chance to escape or contribute in group fights. This somewhat depends on how long it takes to level. If it takes 2 hours to hit level 50 and there is no exp loss scaling in this becomes kind of meaningless. Leveling to 50 you might get beat up in fights but if leveling is that fast it's a temporary experience. To maintain the Counter Strike twist maybe players should just start at level 30ish. A level 30 vs a level 50 is already roughly achieving that goal of escape/group fight viability.

[magnetaress]

sola b should be off of steamfont cuz kobolds and fire

or do sola in one zone right next door so u can go underground from steamfont to dagnors

so sol a dagnors and solb steamfont

[Imago]

This would be a fantastic place to play. 10/10. Keep us updated.

Great ideas with the ports and dark elf starting area.

[azxten]

https://i.imgur.com/BC0CGA8.png

I like the idea of using dungeons to connect steamfont to cauldron. This is the revised map where I also attempted to balance dungeon level ranges between team and ensure that Perma/SolB as raid zones are balanced. Dwarf team has a one zone advantage reaching Permafrost, Elf team has a one zone advantage reaching SolB.

Akanon zones to Butcher now because it's too hard to balance things when one team starts several zones apart and the other starts within 1 zone of each other. Humans could have a little camp at the docks similar to the DE camp then the spawn situations are nearly identical and fits with the idea of the humans being from Antonica. Each race still has a unique start.

Oh and Felwithe/Kaladim are the capitol cities players return to on PvP death. So I'm counting zone lines to locations. This is a bit off as some zones are bigger than other but it's something. Since a lot of the zone lines are custom it's possible to try to even out the run distance using the location of the custom zones within other zones.

[Gustoo]

Kick ass I like that.

The pvp level range and loot / no item loot or permadeath is all interesting. On a server like this stealing armor is gunna be more of an inconvenience than a meaningful threat to pvp since this is way more pvp focused than any live server so having reduced death consequence seems rational.

As far as races go I see the biggest problem is that most pvp psychopaths have been gnomes historically and they also are the only ones who can make the telescope, so maybe that needs to be a vendor item.

But more than the telescope is the kinda players who are gunna roll gnome murderers vs panzy elfs. The dark elf fan boys might be enough to balance it so we’ll have to count on that.

[Jimjam]

I’ve long been a fan of the Faydwer pvp idea. I’d probably cut the level cap to somewhere way below 50. Maybe 39. Maybe even lower.

[azxten]

https://i.imgur.com/WJHad5q.png

All the zone connections are done now. Languages are in, common tongue doesn't exist. Forced languages in all channels including OOC. Halflings replace Humans on Dwarf team to make it classic short team Dwarf/Gnome/Halfling. Using VZ/TZ tag colors but blocking beneficial spells cross team except for Elvish/Dark Elf who also can't attack each other. Fixed EQEmu VZ/TZ teams attack code. Dark Elves speak expert Elvish at start. Halflings/Gnome speak expert Dwarvish.

I'll probably do Bard/Shaman Halfling/Dwarf and some kind of Shaman for Elf team maybe Half Elf/Dark Elf/Wood Elf. Going to leave Gnome SK and Halfling Ranger which is in EQEmu code already. This gets us back to class parity between teams after switching Halfling in for Human.

[Jimjam]

You’re work is looking great.

Merry and Pippin, especially Pippin, were almost magical singers. Plus the rivervale theme slaps! Good call on halfling Bards!

Will you include the expanded shorts hybrid options?

What have you done to prevent characters emoting messages locally? Or are you happy for them to be able to communicate via wild gesticulation?

[Jibartik]

PKy47i9thW4

[azxten]

You’re work is looking great.

Merry and Pippin, especially Pippin, were almost magical singers. Plus the rivervale theme slaps! Good call on halfling Bards!

Will you include the expanded shorts hybrid options?

What have you done to prevent characters emoting messages locally? Or are you happy for them to be able to communicate via wild gesticulation?

Thanks. Yeah the hybrid options are in.

I'm not sure on emotes. I could easily disable them but that's kind of lame. I might be able to apply the same language filter to them.

I'll probably start a separate website soon so I'm not just lingering here on R99 forums.

[Gustoo]

Biggest risk is the shorty team being OP

[Old_PVP]

This looks really cool. Definitely like the custom zone connections and language barrier.

[loramin]

5. No level range for PvP

Why? Creates more of a team atmosphere where you rely on your teammates always. A level 1 spamming snare on a level 50 should have a chance for the spell to land even if it's small.

Personally, I think this one is going to doom your server, because all your new players will be griefed off ... but best of luck: I hope I'm wrong.

[Chortles Snortles]

here's my opinion you should care about, btw don't forget to like, sub, upboat & subscribe to the wiki
(lol)

[magnetaress]

Lvl 5 gnome sk ftw!

Also maybe plz give gnomes druids

[Old_PVP]

I think the only thing missing now would be like Kerra Island and Befallen.

You could possibly add Befallen as an extension to Unrest basement. Then maybe The Hole which extends even further down. It could be one big structure of undead nasties with lvls / toughness adjusted to appropriate levels. Unrest could be low - mid lvl, Befallen would be mid-high level and The Hole could be raid appropriate, or multi-grouped.

Or... The Hole could be an extension of Paw. The lore fits with gnolls worshipping Brell.

[Tradesonred]

Personally, I think this one is going to doom your server, because all your new players will be griefed off ... but best of luck: I hope I'm wrong.

I like the start at 30 idea. Or start at a point where you are not useless right off the bat. The difference between 30 and 50 (spawn vs top level, whatever) could be something like what the 4 levels difference feel on rallos or red. Say like, if youre 20 and youre fighting a level 24. Hard but not impossible, especially if you get the jump.

I also like the idea of putting befallen at the bottom of unrest, not sure what kind of coding work adjusting the difficulty entails but if its not too much trouble, itd be great.

[Tradesonred]

An alternative to permadeath would be my idea for a tweaked out server. Regular or 2X xp, the custom pvp damage, 1 item loot per death. You get one set of no-drop gear per 10 level brackets added to trash mobs' loot table or maybe certain pieces on some rarer or more difficult mobs. Say like if you start at 30 with dwarves, then in the yard of butcherblock you can easily collect pieces of the first no-drop set on trash mobs. This is your gear set you can always fall back on and an informal quest to get all the pieces while you level. As a gauge, you take similar items from that level range and nerf them a bit. You have the choice to either risk the better stats and be looted, or lesser stats and being unlootable. So you get item loot as an economy mechanic, fun pvp mechanic without the brutality of classic. Modified loot tables so gear is really not hard to get but still keeping the best gear gated with the harder mobs.

The only problem with this is bank space. Like in albion online, a full loot server, you have alot of space and can have stacks of items. Maybe flag all items as stackable lol? Say like you can have 8 ruby breastplates, stacked like potion components.

Then you add "junction events". Event mobs that pop in a zone in-between the 2 factions that players fight over.

Some sort of zone holding mechanic at the junction zones, with a commander thats somewhat hard to flip. Just like eve online. With an advantage to holding a zone. Nothing too crazy just something worth fighting over. Maybe a slight xp gain, better drop chances, slight coin drop boost, special mobs popping in your dungeons, off the top of my head.

I remember a horde quest in Wow classic where you accumulated items as a faction quest and then an elemental would spawn near that alliance city near tarren mills. Again off the top of my head. Some sort of collective quest that once people collect enough of X items, an event spawns.

Your server is fine as-is though, this might be alot of work, just this post getting my brain to fire off because i always thought it was a shame there wasnt this kind of modding scene with EQ. At least a substancial amount of it, to the point where theres always a couple of servers to play on with a playerbase.

[Tradesonred]

Another alternative ruleset: Tweak to the permadeath ruleset would be a universal bank for your characters. So your character dies but you still got access to all the loot you accumulated, minus the gear you had on when you croaked. With the stacked armor/weapons tweak. Sort of like hardcore path of exile. Or some sort of modded bank system like this. Im not sure how hard this is to code within EQ.

Basically my only gripe when i think about your server is im rusty from years of not playing and it would be hard to catch up in skill level with vets that never stopped playing. Maybe a single arena zone when permadeath is off so players can practice.

[Tradesonred]

Was in the shower thinking and in fact 2 more things popped into my mind: My major thing with teams is how do you balance the pops? Make sure that one team doesnt start losing, some people stop logging in starting a downward spiral. The other one is preventing people from camping entrances of starting areas. On rallos i remember always tracking where sergeant jackson was or whatever his name was (edit: Slate) so that if i got attacked by a DE i could bait him to die on his sword. Maybe some protecting NPCs like this in the starting zones.

Sorry about all the posts id put them in one if there wasnt a 30minutes timer on edits.

[azxten]

Put together a quick site with forum. I'll generally move to posting stuff there leading up to a larger announcement of launch in other places.

https://pvpeq.com/

[icosta27]

This sounds awesome! Count me in. I was hoping for a server like this to come out... Ultimately was thinking good vs evil races but haven't really thought deep into what the balancing would be like for those. This sounds fun would def try it out.

[Tradesonred]

Id definitely play some of this as seasons, till the ideas pile up and are refined to something better, this could be fun.

I'll drop a mention of this in the goon forums as we lead up to launch, a potential pool of players where theres still interest for emulated EQ.

[azxten]

Id definitely play some of this as seasons, till the ideas pile up and are refined to something better, this could be fun.

I'll drop a mention of this in the goon forums as we lead up to launch, a potential pool of players where theres still interest for emulated EQ.

Thanks I plan to do a bit of a marketing push I'll definitely reach out.

[Gustoo]

You could possibly add Befallen as an extension to Unrest basement. Then maybe The Hole which extends even further down. It could be one big structure of undead nasties with lvls / toughness adjusted to appropriate levels. Unrest could be low - mid lvl, Befallen would be mid-high level and The Hole could be raid appropriate, or multi-grouped.

Or... The Hole could be an extension of Paw. The lore fits with gnolls worshipping Brell.


completely new supreme ultimate idea is a super custom zone connection tower / dungeon server where all the dungeons in the game are connected and are fought through progressively. Also make it do mobs never stop aggroing (treat you like you’re sitting) when you’re way higher level so to get back from the max level basement you gotta fight through the whole damn tower again. No gating out it’s a hell crawl.

So you just keep delving deeper or climbing higher however you’d have it.

So many fun ideas.

I think without real incentive to pvp besides zone control a hot zone with super drops enabled would be the best way to get people to concentrate into open world pvp madness

On this server my plan would be to avoid pvp as much as possible until I hit max level. Just like all the inherently inferior no item loot wide level range servers where pvp serves minimum purpose at low levels except added nuisance.

I don’t mind since you’re planning on making it fast leveling so it kinda nukes out the low level range game which is a shame but I understand why people wanna just be max level already.

[azxten]

I'm leaning towards damage scaling rather than super fast leveling. Still fast but not like one kill gets you a level fast. This retains the enjoyment of PvE for longer while still making PvP viable. Going back to my original idea of a 1% penalty/bonus per level difference. A level 10 hits a level 50 for 30 damage it becomes 30 + 40% = 42. A level 50 hits a level 10 for 100 damage it becomes 100 - 40% = 60. I think the sweet spot is actually 1.5%. In this way a level 10 and 50 can actually fight each other. The higher level still has a big advantage but it fades quickly especially in group fights. Any resist, damage mitigation, etc from level is turned off for PvP so your resist checks are purely gear based.

The default EQEmu code doesn't actually support coin loot. It has a weird half assed loot system but what it can do is allow you to assign an item for players to drop when killed. In this way it allows you to loot coin. I could fix that to just loot coin but I like this mechanic.

I'm thinking of making players drop a Joker card which is turned in for rewards like items including legacy items. They could also just randomly drop gear and another idea I have is we can randomly select a piece of the gear they are wearing and just duplicate it as a drop. In this way the player doesn't lose the item but you still get nice rewards for kills. This allows a balance mechanism as well where lets say one guild is dominating the server and raids if you kill their members they have a chance of dropping their raid gear if they're wearing it. This brings back the old Rallos item bagging strats in a softer but relevant way.

I want to have a live beta on eqemulator loginserver by next weekend. Once these issues are worked out it will be ready for beta. Really I just need to get this beta going and have people test some variations. I'm thinking I'll just make everyone a guide at login and give them a command set that makes testing easy.

https://pvpeq.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=3

[magnetaress]

another idea I have is we can randomly select a piece of the gear they are wearing and just duplicate it as a drop. In this way the player doesn't lose the item but you still get nice rewards for kills. This allows a balance mechanism as well where lets say one guild is dominating the server and raids if you kill their members they have a chance of dropping their raid gear if they're wearing it. This brings back the old Rallos item bagging strats in a softer but relevant way.
fuk yes

[Old_PVP]

fuk yes

This could lead to massive duping of items though, no?

[azxten]

This could lead to massive duping of items though, no?

Yeah, cross team. You could have your buddy meet you and just kill them while they wear something you want to duplicate. I had a few ideas for how to prevent this. No matter what you do though even legitimate fighting would lead to fast item creation. Is this a problem though? The server is supposed to be EQ PvP meets Counter-Strike gear being plentiful fits that model. With dungeons being so interconnected players could probably already hold down serveral item camps alone that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do resulting in faster item accumulation.

I prefer the quest item drop. I like the cards and I was thinking we could track player PvP performance and reward different cards for killing different players. If you kill a good PvP player they drop a King card if you kill a bad player they drop the Joker. Each card has a different reward pool or percentage. This has the same self farming issue but the rewards are more manageable. Turns in usually result in potions, etc but there is a 1 in 1000 chance of a guise, manastone, etc. Players can self farm cards cross team but they have to farm a lot to get a valuable reward and that reward isn't going to break PvP. Similar limitations to block self farming like if player X kills Y they only get a card for X killing Y once an hour.

Still figuring this out. Another mechanic I'm considering is a bounty system. Let's say a level 50 kills a level 45 player, there is no bounty, but if they kill a level 5 player who didn't engage them first they accumulate some bounty points. Basically you get bounty points for being a dick to people and if you accumulate enough you're added as a bounty target which means your PvP flag is turned on and you become attackable by both teams. If you die to a player some kind of unique item is dropped that when turned into an NPC in the capitol cities gives a good reward. The idea being that players griefing others can do so with the penalty of being openly PvP to everyone and having this raid gear bounty put on them. After some time or once the quest is finished they're no longer PvP flagged. The penalty could be more severe or this can be adjusted in other ways but the goal is to identify asshole players and punish them while not forcefully stopping them from being assholes. Maybe players can loot an item off you or something like that instead of the quest so being a bounty target means players can loot your gear if killed and everyone can kill you and you lost levels and so on. That is pretty severe while still allowing these types of players the option to be assholes and have a harder time because of it. I actually want to incentive and disincentivize this at the same time. It could be like a mini game, how long can you last as PvP flagged with bounties on you? There could be rewards for existing in this state at the same time as there are punishments. In general the idea is this third team of the players people don't like and we adjust this team so that those players get even more of a FFA asshole experience but players who don't like them are able to cope.

Maybe these bounty/PvP flagged players can only exist in certain zones like outcasts and those are level 40+ zones so they become restricted to the places they should be.

I don't know there is a lot to consider. For now it's just coin loot.

I'm thinking of moving banks outside of the capitol cities. Fighting at banks is awesome in my opinion. Since the lore of this server is a prequel I was thinking of saying banking as a concept doesn't exist except on Antonica but it is spreading to Faydwer. The Dark Elves and Halflings each have a bank at the de camp in lfay and at butcher docks where halflings start. This makes banks PvP friendly. Even more extreme I considered having one bank only that both teams have to use, that would be pretty funny. Right at the zoneline from butcher/fay so each team can reach it equally easily and it's near the capitol. Maybe the DE/Halfling bankers are still bankers first so there is a bank on each side of the zoneline because they're actually "one bank" that spans races. Kind of like a camp setup by the bankers because the races of Faydwer won't allow them to setup in cities. One side of the zone is your safe bank and the other is the enemy bank.

[magnetaress]

I would make it exceedingly rare to get an item from pvp. The PvP version is NO DROP and LORE always (limits duping stuff like manastones or the bindy necklace). And it could be any item not just one that suits the class or race of the person killing the other person. And it only triggers once per day per person. TOPS. Without a garantee of loot for that single kill. So if u kill someone 200x in a day it just doesn't matter. It would be a low chance like 1% of the time. Per day possible.

I do really like your card idea too.

I don't see why you can't implement card, loot dupe (VERY low chance per day per person), and outlaw system toghether, though the outlaw system could easily be too restrictive on pvp especially as a camp dispute solution. A vote system to vote players into being outlaws would be cool, thats abusable too. IDK rly, I love it, wish there was a way to implement the outlaw system better. OPT IN only + some bonus + some punishment would be cool. Maybe not as steep as item loot but single item loot isn't that terrible for outlaws on this server i think. But they cant loot other ppls items so u would really need to find some big incentive to balance that ... like super deep increased chances of loot from MoBs or something. (not dupe loot from pvp cuz then ppl would just use the outlaw team to farm and zerg the server).


As for the banks just decrease GM and Guard NPC levels and stats to defeat-able mortal levels and move the banks to the newbie zones. One each side.

IDK how u feel about gem farming.

I would make it so ppl could have a gem vendor in each newbie zone aswell. And if you have a stack of gems in your inventory one single gem out of a stack drops everytime u are killed that way you always can lose a little bit, while keeping the majority of ur gems safe and it kinda helps with plat farming some since ppl can still lose money and its risky to carry around gives the banks more purpose again. So if your carrying 19, one is always going to drop as loot. It IS a lot of coding. I would also add in more expensive gems than rubies just so ppl could bank higher numbers of plat that way with more risk. So if someone does get up to like 80 stacks of rubies, maybe they want to save bag space and buy 8 gems, at risk of losing only 1 of those 8.

One other really really dumb request. Please fix warrior bash shield agro so it does like a decent amount of agro in PvE and maybe a bit more dps to make it more viable for soloing PvE wise. Sorta like as intended initially. It doesn't really need a buff in pvp. Maybe a tinnny damage increase in pvp. Just a few points to help warriors get that kill shot in better on nasty wizards.

[ledbedder]

Create a symmetrical map with the same number of dungeons for each level bracket on each side.

5-20 = Crushbone // Befallen
20-40 = Mistmoore // Unrest
35-50 = Solb // Kedge // Guk // Permafrost

Items from the eliminated zones should be redistributed throughout the remaining zones. This would increase the value of the remaining zones and add a feeling of new-ness without having to creating custom items (which often leads to balance issues or contributes to a sentiment that the server isn't classic).

For example: In upper guk there are only two or three items that are useful - runed bone fork, gatorscale legs (maybe?), and ghoulbane (maybe?). You could take those items and add them to the Avenging Caitliff (https://wiki.project1999.com/An_avenging_caitiff) and Imp Familiar (https://wiki.project1999.com/An_imp_familiar) in Mistmoore - both of which drop nothing of value on a pvp server.

Players can now camp multiple items from within one zone and ideally in less time. Having to keep multiple camps down in a smaller area would prevent people from having multiple characters parked in different zones and logging in/out during respawn time.

Items from the eliminated zones could also be used as pvp rewards or quest rewards.

Also, add a druid port to plane of fear. There's already a druid ring.
Add Quillmane to lesser faydark.
Add the ancient cyclops to dagnor's cauldron. Add Hasten Bootstrutter to Steamfont.

[Gustoo]

I also think making a kick ass map from eq zone selection is critical to glory

[magnetaress]

Create a symmetrical map with the same number of dungeons for each level bracket on each side.

5-20 = Crushbone // Befallen
20-40 = Mistmoore // Unrest
35-50 = Solb // Kedge // Guk // Permafrost

Items from the eliminated zones should be redistributed throughout the remaining zones. This would increase the value of the remaining zones and add a feeling of new-ness without having to creating custom items (which often leads to balance issues or contributes to a sentiment that the server isn't classic).

For example: In upper guk there are only two or three items that are useful - runed bone fork, gatorscale legs (maybe?), and ghoulbane (maybe?). You could take those items and add them to the Avenging Caitliff (https://wiki.project1999.com/An_avenging_caitiff) and Imp Familiar (https://wiki.project1999.com/An_imp_familiar) in Mistmoore - both of which drop nothing of value on a pvp server.

Players can now camp multiple items from within one zone and ideally in less time. Having to keep multiple camps down in a smaller area would prevent people from having multiple characters parked in different zones and logging in/out during respawn time.

Items from the eliminated zones could also be used as pvp rewards or quest rewards.

Also, add a druid port to plane of fear. There's already a druid ring.
Add Quillmane to lesser faydark.
Add the ancient cyclops to dagnor's cauldron. Add Hasten Bootstrutter to Steamfont.

My only criticisms

Kedge is a terrible zone for pvp and just general purpose play. It's great for being kedge. I wouldn't count it in the pvp rotation.

I would put jboots on a neutral vendor. OR split up hasten and cyclops across sides. Not favoring shorties.

[Gustoo]

Hasten way easier than getting AC ring.

Hasten should be in a hellish horrible place of pvp so when you carry 3250 gold you’re fully clenched

Two ACs

[magnetaress]

Hasten way easier than getting AC ring.

Hasten should be in a hellish horrible place of pvp so when you carry 3250 gold you’re fully clenched

Two ACs
Lol perfect. Although jboots are semi critical for some unless sow pots exist and are easy enough to come by.

Stuff like jboots and pegi aren't that critical until late game on an old server tho. CoS and see invis stuff in the same boat.

[Spithridates]

yooooooooo

[Records]

There was a server called COH-PVP back in the day, like this, and it had a neat ruleset.

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22396
Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to extend an invitation to join us on Friday, February 16 as CoH PvP goes into Open Beta.

A Few Basics:
Max Level: 50
Playable Zones: Customized Antonica
Gameplay: 2-factions with completely unrestricted PVP

We've added a good amount of custom content that we are very excited about.

Feel free to visit us at www.cohpvp.net if you would like to find out more.

Take care,

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22396&page=3

Hello everyone, now that the server is back up, I wanted to advertise the new state of affairs on pvp combat, for those that dont play but may be interested.
The following is an excert from the Information & Announcements section of our forums.


The following is the current state of affairs of PVP combat: rewards & Punishment.
PVP Combat
Any player may pvp any other player. There is no restriction on spells, detrimental or benificial.
PVP Rewards
PVP rewards are given under the following conditions:
Players are not in the same guild.
Can't kill yourself for pvp rewards

Players earn Merit when they kill an opponent.
Players earn 5 base merit points in a kill.
Players also steal points from their victims. The amount of stolen merit is a percentage of the killed player's total merit. The size of the percentage is based on the level difference of the Player and killed Player.

Level Difference = Level_of_loser - Level_of_winner
So if you kill someone higher level than you, your level difference is positive. Killing a player lower level than you is a negative level difference.


Here are some chosen values of Percentage of Points Stolen as a Function of Level Difference.

-49 Level Difference: 0 %
-45 Level Difference: 0.22 %
-40 Level Difference: 0.42 %
-35 Level Difference: 0.61 %
-30 Level Difference: 0.82 %
-25 Level Difference: 2.3 %
-20 Level Difference: 4.6 %
-15 Level Difference: 7.5 %
-10 Level Difference: 11 %
-5 Level Difference: 15 %
0 Level Difference: 20 %
5 Level Difference: 25 %
10 Level Difference: 31 %
15 Level Difference: 38 %
20 Level Difference: 45 %
25 Level Difference: 53 %
30 Level Difference: 62 %
35 Level Difference: 71 %
40 Level Difference: 81 %
45 Level Difference: 91 %
+49 Level Difference: 100 %

Here is an example of how merit works:

Smugg is a level 40 badass necro with 100 merit points.
Gritz is a cautious level 50 cleric with 100 merit points.

1. Gritz kills Smugg:
Level Difference = 40 - 50 = -10
Percentage of Merit Stolen = 11%
Base Merit Earned: 5
Merit Stolen: 11
--------------------------------------
Total Points: 16

If on the other hand,
2. Smugg kills Gritz
Level Difference = 50 - 40 = +10
Percentage of Merit Stolen = 31%
Base Merit Earned: 5
Merit Stolen: 31
--------------------------------------
Total Points: 36

See Kedra's Item Reward System for one thing merit is used for. Item Rewards involve upgrading your current items. Anything may be upgraded, including the click effect, proc effect, name, and even graphic.

#merits Command
Players may use the #merits command to view their target's total merits. If no target is specified, the default is the player herself.
#merits also has the alias #points. Both do the same.

PVP Punishments
Each Punishment has its own conditions.
Bounty Hunter System (DISABLED)
A Player who kills another player outside of a +/- 10 level range is subject to a bounty. Bounty Hunters will hunt this player until his death or the bounty expires, usually around 1 earth day. Victims of a player must seek out the Bondsman, if they wish to place a bounty.

Level Reduction (Active)
A player who kills another player less than 20 levels below her/him is subject to an immediate deleveling by exactly 1 level.

Grouping
Any player may group with any other player.
Groupmates cannot melee or be the recipient of detrimental spells from other groupmates. (can't hurt each other).

Grouping in PVP is now supported. The only differences are as follows:

Level Difference = level of loser - highest level of group.

Base Merit Reward = 6 (instead of 5).
Base Merit reward is distributed amongst groupmates. There are always 6 base points given out, so some group members may get more points than others:
2 Group Members: each get 3 pts.
3 Group members: each get 2 pts.
4 Group Members: each get 1 pt, and two get another 1 pt.
so on...

Merit is still stolen, according to the level difference.
The total stolen merit is divided amongst the group, but rounded down to the closest integer.
So if a group of 3 steals 100 merit points total, 100 / 3 = 33.3...
Each player recieves 33 points.

Some things in the works are PVP Quests, PVP Games, and more.


----
Though I see you mentioning it as akin to Counter-strike server and moving banks around.
The typical counter-strike game would be like
Spawn > Buy Items > Run to Objectives

Maybe even more to the point for a fast paced EQ server like that, if you look at it like a FFA CS server. where you spawn anywhere on the map, change Gun Loadouts to try, and then run around killing people.
Spawn > Change Loadout > Run around

In an EQ world the typical experience is leveling, acquiring more skills and spells and getting better at performing same thing over and over. With the hopes of acquiring more items and gear. Though with the PVP aspect potions/stones/clickies and niche items become more rewarding and sort of your toolkit.

----
Open questions:
- What aspects do you want to consider to add or take away from EQ to shuffle it into something like a CS FFA Server?

Server should function like:
Spawn > Easily Acquire Levels / Items ~ Select a Loadout > Run around

Spawn:
(Anywhere, or set spawns?)

Easily Acquire Levels / Items ~ Select a Loadout
(Faster to acquire, items lose meaning, how would you prevent that?)
(Legacy items wouldn't have to spawn from named mobs, it could drop from anywhere, sort of like Mischief ruleset)

Run around
(To what end? If items are easy to acquire, is the really only reason leveling? If that's the case then a quickly rotating hot zone to get you leveled faster would inspire migration from one zone to the next)
Hot zone rotation + decay would be interesting to see.
- Hot zone Changes to X zone.
- X zone exp and loot chance increases.
- Announce best Zone X serverwide as an event/objective (maybe this also increases more unique loot chance?)
- After some time Zone will switch again,
- Zone X Hot zone exp + loot chance decays down to 0 over the next hour.

[Gustoo]

This thread is the best

[Records]

Can you include halflings that start in Akanon w/ gnomes?

[Jimjam]

Halflings can start in Lesser Fay as exchange students for brownies sent to rivervale.

[Tassador]

So far from playing people are talking about imaginary eq custom servers. If only this energy wouldn’t be wasted writing novels on dead forums.

Toodles

[magnetaress]

Glad to see ol uncle tass lurkin

[Jimjam]

Looks like even Tass wants to be in on the action!

[Old_PVP]

Halflings can start in Lesser Fay as exchange students for brownies sent to rivervale.

They got the Nillipuss brownie connection, only makes sense. For real though, maybe make the LFAY brownie village the halfling starter area? Nobody fully utilizes that brownie village anyway.

[Gustoo]

Halfling on shorty team makes shorty even more OP

I really think the problem is gunna be only magnetaress playing on team elf

[azxten]

Short team has one less race and I'll be playing a Dark Elf. Elf team has some pretty sweet zones honestly I kind of consider them OP not the short team. I will admit the short team is probably more fun though. Plus, sadly, none of the short team races can do a flying kick animation as monks but all of the elf races can. The NPCs are in that make any race at level 1 a shaman, bard, or monk.

Currently Halflings start at Butcher dock where I planned to add a little camp for them. The lore of the server is still a prequel so Halflings are the first major visitors from Antonica and Dark Elves are Innoruuks soldiers trying to kill the Dwarves. Elves are allied with Dark Elves because they have their King/Queen hostage. The Gnomes, once this attack from the elves started, magically moved the entrance for their city to Butcherblock.

Blackburrow zone is in a small abandoned tower in Butcherblock. You walk through the tower door to zone. Gnomes start in Akanon and when you zone out of Akanon you zone into Butcher at the undead tower next to the Druid BB port. Same concept, if you enter the tower door you zone to Akanon. I'm not in love with either of these but they work for now. There are a couple gnome guards outside the undead tower but I'll add some more maybe move the vendors from outside Akanon to that location and add a couple custom mobs in their empty huts outside akanon. Also I turned off the Akanon zone from Steamfont side so it's just a short cave. I was thinking of adding a raid Gnome Monk or something there. The one who stayed behind when the elves attacked.

I think I'm making good enough progress to do a soft beta launch Friday. I'm sure there are a lot of issues because I haven't done much testing outside of the mechanics I added which will work flawlessly. This is what I had left. Items with a question mark icon were probably okay to do after beta starts.

https://pvpeq.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=3

Anyway...

I came back here to ask for a couple things.

How to deal with zone dancing and plugging? If I remember right R99 if you plugged you came out other side LD but you still danced. Some players might consider this a fun classic mechanic but I always thought it was lame.

I was thinking of putting a proximity NPC event at all zone lines that protects you from PvP. This avoids the dancing and plugging. Zone lines are a more effective form of safety without all the BS. That's pretty care bear though and also introduces a new custom mechanic that could dramatically impact PvP.

The next idea is a spell effect that blocks zoning which gets applied every time you zone OR gets applied if you've been in PvP recently. It just lasts 10-20 seconds enough to push things more in the direction of fighting instead of back and forth zoning. Plugging you would still pop out LD. This sounds like coding I don't really want to do but I could. The main problem being the client starts zoning and you can cancel it in an awkward way or send them to the safe spot so I'd have to find a better way to cancel their zone attempt if the effect is active.

And last I'm thinking just do nothing and leave it as it is. That's classic and it's fine for now.

Outside of that if anyone has experience with PvP and raiding I'd like to talk to someone via private message about ideas to improve that experience and make the raid fights more challenging. I never liked raiding so I'm the last person who should probably try to make custom content for that group. Whatever gets worked out I'd like it to be private so raiding is still novel.

[azxten]

Also what happened on R99 during raiding in terms of combat in general? Was melee or casting overpowered?

I'm thinking about including my classic channeling code but people will freak out since they're used to P99 care bear channeling. If it would positively impact PvP though by making casters less powerful during pre-Kunark era I think it's worth it. The main difference is you have to pass a channeling check for every attack not just one roll.

I wanted to make a private emulator server to play on with my family so I intend to pursue making this a classic server with clear boundaries on customization. PvP relevant stuff, experience rates, and the Faydwer map should be close to all of the custom changes compared to pre-Kunark era.

[azxten]

https://imgur.com/Gp99idD.png

Testing cross team guild/group, dark elf faction, and inability to attack team races in their capitol city.

[Goobles]

Pet root was way OP. You're gonna wanna balance that. They nerfed spell damage too, but I forget by what %

[Gustoo]

Melee is OP at max gear even in Kunark max gear.

In vanilla casters are better off because stuff lands.

Just leave zone plugging alone. When someone plugs, they lose. They’re offline and when they come back online they will maybe just get killed anyways. On this server with less death penalty it will be even more of a hassle to cowardly avoid death by plugging.

I don’t think it’s worth the trouble to “fix” this and it’s a classic mechanic. zone lines are inherently safer than places far from zone lines, that’s how EQ works in every instance both PVP and not pvp.

Spell damage and resists are pretty important. At 100mr most CC spells should not land or not last very long. That’s how it was on live. This means casters are fun at low levels and less fun when people get decent resist gear.

Check pet aggro. On live for quite a while a mage pet could be attacking you at guards and the guards would do nothing. Then if you attack the pet, they kill you.

This behavior would make sense for a max ally mage pet but it was like this for all pet activities when the pet owner was out of range of the guards.

Guard NPCs should help whoever has best faction. If you had better faction than someone else you could kill them in cold blood in front of guards. If they had worse faction and attacked you near guards, guards would aggro them.

Capitol cities would need to be impossible to gain faction and all people of that faction should start at max ally or whatever you determine makes sense, so a Halfling in kelethin can’t really attack anyone without getting aggro from all the guard NPCs

[magnetaress]

what about same faction gustoo? no guard interference? Also ppl should take faction hits for killing ppl.

And evil team should not be able to get past dubios faction with good team.

Also what happened on R99 during raiding in terms of combat in general? Was melee or casting overpowered?

I'm thinking about including my classic channeling code but people will freak out since they're used to P99 care bear channeling. If it would positively impact PvP though by making casters less powerful during pre-Kunark era I think it's worth it. The main difference is you have to pass a channeling check for every attack not just one roll.

I wanted to make a private emulator server to play on with my family so I intend to pursue making this a classic server with clear boundaries on customization. PvP relevant stuff, experience rates, and the Faydwer map should be close to all of the custom changes compared to pre-Kunark era.

I remember having to box strafe super hardcore to maybe get a 1-3 second cast off and it could still be interupted on live in pvp if the melee bro was on u and it did not need max haste and like two tiny daggers

melee sucked on EMU because of this they where indeed a lot better on live especially if two or three melee could swarm a caster or one get the drop on them in tight quarters.

[Old_PVP]

I think you should also add a gnome banker inside the Sol A gnome town to create a Highkeep type of zone for the shorties. Just looking at the map, it seems like elves currently have the advantage in terms of how close their banks are to their farming locations. Mistmoore for example is deep in elf territory with a dark elf camp / banker close by.

https://i.imgur.com/BC0CGA8.png

[Gustoo]

On live spells got interrupted a lot. You had to cast between hits if you were face to face like on a melee. Otherwise they got interrupted. Channeling was rare.

Here you just cast and it goes off.

[Old_PVP]

Another note on banking:

Elf team currently has 4 banks, shorts currently have 2. Maybe fix it like this:


Kaladim --- Kelethin
Ak'Anon --- Felwithe
Sol A --- Dark elf camp
Paw --- Runnyeye

The 4th elf bank is technically Runnyeye (which has banker & merchant). They are monster merchants though so sneak is required, however they are still located only 1 zone away from the elf raid zone of Sol B.

You can even this out by making the 4th shorty bank in Paw. Again, make them gnoll bankers / merchant so sneak is required or faction spell. This gives shorties a bank also only 1 zone from their raid zone of Permafrost.

[magnetaress]

On live spells got interrupted a lot. You had to cast between hits if you were face to face like on a melee. Otherwise they got interrupted. Channeling was rare.

Here you just cast and it goes off.

one caveat clerics seemed to channel the best, and paladins with full plate like some how max hit played a rolele or everyone who whore plate just told themselves that

bards also got interupted madly while just singing if they got touched even a lil bit

[Gustoo]

That goes beyond my reckoning as I mostly played a ranger and other soft classes.

[Old_PVP]

The Dark Elf camp in lfay becomes a slightly larger custom camp where Dark Elf players start possibly with some custom level 1-5 mobs for them to level on before traveling elsewhere. Bank, vendor, spells, trainers, etc.

Maybe just have the Dark elves inhabit the abandoned gnome buildings in Steam? Buildings near old Ak'Anon entrance / windmills? There are a lot of NPC dark elves that would be needed... class trainers, merchants, guards, banker etc. Steam would give you more space + buildings that already exist + newbie friendly starting area.

Runnyeye entrance in the mino caves?

[Gustoo]

Dark elf’s are not gnome aligned you gotta add sk necro vendors and gms to felwithe basically right?

[Old_PVP]

Well Ak'Anon is being magically transported to Butcherblock.

The Gnomes, once this attack from the elves started, magically moved the entrance for their city to Butcherblock.

Blackburrow zone is in a small abandoned tower in Butcherblock. You walk through the tower door to zone. Gnomes start in Akanon and when you zone out of Akanon you zone into Butcher at the undead tower next to the Druid BB port.

So my thoughts are instead of starting dark elves in LFAY in a tiny camp & then the extra work of adding newbie mobs... just start them in Steam which is abandoned anyway. No extra work needed really.

[Old_PVP]

Short team has one less race and I'll be playing a Dark Elf. Elf team has some pretty sweet zones honestly I kind of consider them OP not the short team. I will admit the short team is probably more fun though. Plus, sadly, none of the short team races can do a flying kick animation as monks but all of the elf races can. The NPCs are in that make any race at level 1 a shaman, bard, or monk.


So humans are out then? Will halfling rangers & gnome sk be possible now?

[Gustoo]

I’m just saying start em in felwithe and you just need two GMs and a handful of spell vendors

[Old_PVP]

Ahh yeah, that would be easy too.

[azxten]

Dark elves don't need anything actually. I was thinking about vendors and such but then I realized skills and spells auto train/scribe so what exactly do you need? The only other function is banking and selling both of which they can do in Felwithe. Maybe crafting or something which currently you max skill on at level 2 so that's not a problem.

The Dark Elf camp as a starting spot only really needs some newb mobs to get you to level 5ish before you run to gfay. It needs like one vendor with some basic newb gear like backpacks and stuff (not that it even needs those) and to be able to sell to.

So I was thinking of making that camp just kind of like a safe spot. Add another 2-5ish dark elves and it's just a place in lfay that the elf team can hang out and the other team risks aggro from the NPCs. That's about it. They just start there because it kind of fits with classic and it makes their life a little more challenging which is also classic. They have longer to run to crushbone until they get bind and stuff like that.

If anything I think Dark Elves should just start in Felwithe. I moved Gnomes to Butcher because they were too far from Dwarves/Halflings and now the Elf team is split between lfay/gfay whereas Dwarf team is all together. I probably should do that because GFay/Butcher being connected to capitol cities and all races starting in or within cities connected to these zones provides decent balance.

Halfling ranger and gnome SK will be in for balance. Humans are out. It's Gnome/Dwarf/Halfling vs High Elf/Half Elf/Wood Elf/Dark Elf.

Thanks for the PvP feedback. It sounds like classic channeling should be in. I have the same memory of the importance of avoiding melees for casters. I used to always have levitate buried in my buff stack so I could run up walls and stuff to get out of melee range and then the melee would run out of range/around corners and use a bow. There was a sort of meta there to movement you would always have to fake out melees as a caster to try to get that few second window to get a spell off. It balanced how powerful spells were prior to raid resist gear.

[azxten]

Spent some time refining dueling. There is a "Duel Coordinator" character in Kaladim/Felwithe. He offers Crushbone and Blackburrow instanced dueling where you just join with your current gear/level. Players get zoned in and have about 30 seconds for someone to accept their duel or they get ejected. If someone accepts they join in, fight, and the winner is ejected about 30 seconds after the other player is dead. Both players are flagged red PVP so that you can also duel people on your own team. This lets you loot their corpse and take a victory lap on some orcs or whatever. The loser has to ask the duel NPC to give them back their corpse. This currently lets you summon any corpses you have but I can restrict it later to just instance created corpses.

This can be extended in so many ways. I already see it is possible to create a group, sign up for a duel, and have another group accept the challenge. All the necessary functionality is there.

Server name is FaydWAR was decided on the pvpeq.com forums. I'll switch the domain to faydwar.com soon.

I'll do a soft beta launch tommorrow, hope people can check it out. I have some friends who are going to play maybe 3-5ish people plus Gustoo offered to pre-beta beta test so hopefully I can get some fixes in from that feedback prior to launch. This is a rough beta I'm sure all kinds of stuff is messed up and not classic I need to start making the list.

[Jimjam]

If casters are getting autogranted spells, will melee be autogranted equipment? Maybe shortsword * scales with level?

[azxten]

If casters are getting autogranted spells, will melee be autogranted equipment? Maybe shortsword * scales with level?

Yeah, I was going to start players with fine steel but then I realized you could just farm plat selling it on new characters. You already get about 1pp of gear from the armor. I'll figure something out though melees should have a similar starting advantage. This just gets you to level 10-20ish when you have to start making choices about where to go and what to camp to equip yourself. Nothing would scale or be provided that is intended to help beyond that.

[Jimjam]

Just improve the starter weapons to fine steel instead of rusty stats?

[ledbedder]

why would you try to reinvent 20 years of emulator pvp?

devnoob/image and even gangsta has thrown their servers onto github.

all you have to do is take their codebase and implement the zone/team modifications.

[azxten]

why would you try to reinvent 20 years of emulator pvp?

devnoob/image and even gangsta has thrown their servers onto github.

all you have to do is take their codebase and implement the zone/team modifications.

Where is the source? Feel free to share and I'll take a look. Most of the code I've written I'm fairly sure no one has done before except for teams. It's all trivial stuff honestly only the instanced dueling took a bit of effort. I'm sure there is a lot I'm missing in terms of prior work.

Also, let me ask you this, where are the PvP servers if I'm building on their 20 years of work? None of them have had lasting success. I might just be the next sucker in a line of EQ PvP hopefuls who will end up with a dead server and that's fine with me. I'll just keep improving it for my own uses.

Seriously though do please share any source or data I might be able to implement. I'm happy to make my own code public as well for others to review. I was kind of considering open sourcing everything from the start so players don't have that feeling like it's all a custom black box.

I can’t imagine playing anything image and Gangsta have touched on the development end of things. Yikes, pretty sure secrets was left off that list even though his DLL is all over this box, his reputation is now widespread thus singa was smart to leave him off but we know he has done things behind the scenes similar to roz (another dead server)

Also there seems to be a stigma attached to most of the existing EQEmu PvP servers. It seems like a very incestuous community that has been rehashing the same code that doesn't retain a player base. I really mean no offense and I'm sure there is a lot of great work but that it the answer. People want to know WHO is involved with a server and where it comes from. I don't want to be "Gangstas old code on a new shit box" in people's minds. For now I don't really plan any collaboration and the only other person I plan to make a GM is a real life friend who started all of this by asking me about an EQ Easy Server so they could fuck around and visit old raid zones they didn't get to see in live. They are no one who has any kind of reputation around here.

[Gustoo]

I support your approach.

when it’s ready to go live maybe name the server your website address so people can go somewhere and get info about how the server is gunna work. Or a window when you drop into the game.

Getting it off the ground is first but I dunno I really think it’s possible to have a pvp server that persists for a while as long as staff isn’t intent on supporting a population of a few dudes that steamroll the rest of the people trying to play

[Tradesonred]

Is it gonna pop on the server list? Too bad new world fresh servers launched a week ago. Havent played a MMO in quite a bit and while some of its parts are terrible, it has fun combat and lots of weapons to try. Ill try to log in anyway!

[Cwall 146.0]

Also there seems to be a stigma attached to most of the existing EQEmu PvP servers. It seems like a very incestuous community that has been rehashing the same code that doesn't retain a player base. I really mean no offense and I'm sure there is a lot of great work but that it the answer. People want to know WHO is involved with a server and where it comes from. I don't want to be "Gangstas old code on a new shit box" in people's minds. For now I don't really plan any collaboration and the only other person I plan to make a GM is a real life friend who started all of this by asking me about an EQ Easy Server so they could fuck around and visit old raid zones they didn't get to see in live. They are no one who has any kind of reputation around here.

nah, code sharing hasn't been a thing until very recently

a large issue over the past 15 years of eq emu pvp is that you keep getting new servers from different hosts using the same, shitty stock eqemu with minor modifications. as a result, none of the servers have been high quality

[Cwall 146.0]

1. Two teams (Human/Dwarf/Gnome vs High Elf/Wood Elf/Half Elf/Dark Elf)

Why? This allows for team balance outside the typical Faydwer races. Humans allow Bard/Ranger/Druid/SK and Dark Elf allows Necro/SK.

mostly fine, although elf team has far superior racials (dark elf), but this is kind of unavoidable with racial teams regardless


2. No shaman OR Dwarf and Half Elf Shaman

Why? Otherwise we might as well just add all the races which loses some of the Dwarf v Elf focus. A lot of players probably want to play Shaman so it could be added a custom class for other races.

add shamans to both teams, and if you're considering excluding any class for any reason, I'd start with removing bards

no shamans means that the massive disparity between caster power and melee power in classic grows even wider


3. Coin loot

Why? People don't like punishments for PvP death. A lot of PvP players love full loot, item loot, exp loss, etc but this limits the player base to a small niche who will tolerate such extreme loss on PvP death. The intent is to appeal to a wider range of players.

PvE players won't play EQ PvP regardless of loot rules

the existing PvP community has shown across the past several servers that there is a large interest in some form of item loot, as multiple servers have had differing implementations with success (randomly selected item from inventory, one choice of an item from inventory, excluding certain inventory slots/bags, etc.)

I'd avoid exp loss, and coin loot is boring and without actual consequences for dying outside of extremely rare cases


4. Fast exp

Why? Lessens commitment for new players to be able to contribute to PvP on a peer level with older players.

yes and no

hyper tryhard players will continuously level alts to gain an advantage, and fast exp only accelerates the arms race against players who simply won't chain level alts

if you're going to have fast exp, you need to add incentives for people to continue to work on one character


5. No level range for PvP

Why? Creates more of a team atmosphere where you rely on your team mates always. A level 1 spamming snare on a level 50 should have a chance for the spell to land even if it's small.

I don't feel strongly about level range for PvP, especially if the exp is going to be fast (a vast majority of players will be max level before long), but you will absolutely have max level players farming lowbies without level range restrictions; I don't think this has any/many realistic benefits

please god reconsider your idea about low level characters landing CC effects on high level characters


6. Scaled PvP damage to allow lower/higher levels to have fairer fights while still having a power differential

Why? Same as no level range, more of a team atmosphere. Allows new players to quickly be capable of holding their own in fights or at least being able to escape instead of being steamrolled in one spell.

what's the point of leveling up then? hardly anyone has an expectation of killing a level 50 character in their 20s/30s


7. PvP death sends you to a team city, can't gate for 5 minutes after (stop bind rushing)

Why? With only coin loot there is minimal punishment for dying in PvP. The only punishment is the corpse run and this should be equal for melee/casters and some guaranteed distance away from likely PvP areas.

good, and I would suggest that players respawn with 0 mana

consider restricting binding to cities only imo


8. No cross team trading, guilding, beneficial spells, or language. Dwarvish (Dwarf/Gnome/Human) and Elvish (High Elf/Wood Elf/Half Elf/Dark Elf) are mastered at start by the races on those teams. Languages can be learned over time.

Why? More emphasis on separation between teams, less griefing especially for new players who won't be able to understand the enemy, and avoid the overpowered cross team guilds healing your enemies during fights and such.

good, but it won't stop cross teaming (nothing will)


9. Instanced dueling/team fights possibly for PvP points to be spent in some way

Why? This lets new players of EQ PvP the opportunity to practice fighting quickly and learn skills required to successfully fight in open world without becoming annoyed by how much they would die otherwise having no opportunity to learn except for a brief fight between corpse runs.

pvp points and using them as a (primary) method of progressing your character is excellent

I don't care for instanced stuff, so I would suggest implementing pvp point progression through open world pvp in some shape


10. Each team has a capital city that is safe for their team and is where they can join instanced duels.

Why? Casual players like safe zones, this is the minimum we could offer. Another potential safe zone would be a trade area where teams can trade between each other and possibly languages spoken in that zone are clear. Haven't decided if this is worthwhile yet or if teams should be expected to only trade between each other or drop trade between teams if players can speak each others languages or otherwise work out deals.

no to all safe zones imo


Map (need feedback):

generally good; fewer zones are better in this smaller community, but I'm concerned you're adding too many additional dungeons and reintroducing the too-many-zones problem

if your heart is set on all of these dungeons being in, I'd suggest staggering their release so that A) people have new things to look forward to throughout the server's lifespan and B) it will concentrate the playerbase in fewer zones and then the newer zones when they release

[Gustoo]

That is good quality feedback.

I support removing bards.

[magnetaress]

yea solid points from Cwall pvp professional

[Tradesonred]

what's the point of leveling up then? hardly anyone has an expectation of killing a level 50 character in their 20s/30s


Point is access to higher level gear, prob some utility spells in there like porting. So the options to me are either keep it 4 levels or this tweaked pvp dmg thing, which i like more because its unintuitive to throw yourself in a fight and ooops cant attack this guy. Still not a fan of instadeath because everyone will dodge pvp till end game for the most part (recreating the first months of red 1.0) but id take it with a side of a "practice room" where people can practice to be better prepared to fight people like Cwall. Liking this back and forth feedback, we might actually get somewhere.

[azxten]

It's available now if anyone wants to check things out. Normal eqemulator loginserver list. Server is FaydWAR.

No plans for anyone to be there so expect it to be empty. This is just an open beta if people want to contribute feedback.

I updated the website with some better zone connection details.

https://pvpeq.com/map.php

[Gustoo]

exxxxxxcelllenttt

[Old_PVP]

Logged on for a little bit & provided some feedback on the forums.

https://pvpeq.com/

[Latisrof]

Just made a toon!

[azxten]

Having made a beta version available that implements all the PvP and zone changes the biggest body of work left seems to be making things classic. I found out the implementation of expansions in EQEmu is relatively new and there is an ongoing project to improve that so that classic servers are easy to create. I think I figured out how to reverse engineer most of P99 and TAKP by myself so that is the direction I'll go in now.

I'm tempted to create a real fork of EQEmu that both improves the ability to restrict by expansion and starts to include classic mechanics as easily chosen functionality based on expansion. There is a point though where I'd have to put in enough effort to gain community contribution and I'm not sure if I'm up for it.

If one could reach that critical mass I think you could outpace both of these projects in terms of "classicness" by virtue of being the only open source classic EQEmu project that provides both the EQEmu fork and classic database needed to achieve this. ProjectEQ not providing classic zone data is a big hole that is forcing so many people to create their own classic server. It's less important on the EQEmu side as functions are easy to change, piles of quest and spawn data where you don't know what the new values should be are not. Ideally this would involve rolling a new loginserver to fully fork the current EQEmu into a new community that has no reliance on them. The way the loginserver works today with pinned server categories it will always be difficult to gain legitimacy with players who see your servers are literally "beneath" a selection of other servers that is primarily just a certain group of developers of EQEmu.

You have to separate the concept of running an emulated server and that emulated server existing in the paradigm of loginserver control given to a few people. Not to mention they also control all your account logins and passwords and therefore if you were to make such a commitment as mentioned above you are at their mercy to not purge your server data making all players permanently lose access to their characters.

So do I have basically the willingness to fork EQEmu and make classic era available for everyone including classic data and then also build an open source community/bug report system and roll a new loginserver and account management interface? Probably not... but it'd be a lot cooler if I did. I could also try to contribute within the existing EQEmu project and such but it sounds like historically there was some fundamental differences in opinion about open sourcing classic era code and functionality with people like image feeling it should be open source. So that is a battle that already happened there. Sounds like it's put up or shut up time now with regards to a truly open classic EQ project. TAKP is promising to do this but if they're going to open source it then they should shit or get off the pot and a questionable amount of their functionality will be tied to their specific EQMac client that no one seems to like.

Plus there is the client problem looming over it all. That person who made openeq had the right idea it's another critical piece that basically HAS to happen. If I had a client I could provide people I'd pay for advertising to build a EQ PVP community by appealing to the larger PVP MMO community but since I can't provide the client you're always at the mercy of a tiny community of people and can't organically grow. With the level of effort mentioned with this client and the above you're looking at roughly a $1 million effort as a rough estimate if you paid for developers to implement everything. I'm just reflecting on the state of things in general. I don't like where EQemu is as a project but I certainly didn't put in the 20 years of work so I can't complain.

[Old_PVP]

Having made a beta version available that implements all the PvP and zone changes the biggest body of work left seems to be making things classic. I found out the implementation of expansions in EQEmu is relatively new and there is an ongoing project to improve that so that classic servers are easy to create. I think I figured out how to reverse engineer most of P99 and TAKP by myself so that is the direction I'll go in now.

I'm tempted to create a real fork of EQEmu that both improves the ability to restrict by expansion and starts to include classic mechanics as easily chosen functionality based on expansion. There is a point though where I'd have to put in enough effort to gain community contribution and I'm not sure if I'm up for it.

If one could reach that critical mass I think you could outpace both of these projects in terms of "classicness" by virtue of being the only open source classic EQEmu project that provides both the EQEmu fork and classic database needed to achieve this. ProjectEQ not providing classic zone data is a big hole that is forcing so many people to create their own classic server. It's less important on the EQEmu side as functions are easy to change, piles of quest and spawn data where you don't know what the new values should be are not. Ideally this would involve rolling a new loginserver to fully fork the current EQEmu into a new community that has no reliance on them. The way the loginserver works today with pinned server categories it will always be difficult to gain legitimacy with players who see your servers are literally "beneath" a selection of other servers that is primarily just a certain group of developers of EQEmu.

You have to separate the concept of running an emulated server and that emulated server existing in the paradigm of loginserver control given to a few people. Not to mention they also control all your account logins and passwords and therefore if you were to make such a commitment as mentioned above you are at their mercy to not purge your server data making all players permanently lose access to their characters.

So do I have basically the willingness to fork EQEmu and make classic era available for everyone including classic data and then also build an open source community/bug report system and roll a new loginserver and account management interface? Probably not... but it'd be a lot cooler if I did. I could also try to contribute within the existing EQEmu project and such but it sounds like historically there was some fundamental differences in opinion about open sourcing classic era code and functionality with people like image feeling it should be open source. So that is a battle that already happened there. Sounds like it's put up or shut up time now with regards to a truly open classic EQ project. TAKP is promising to do this but if they're going to open source it then they should shit or get off the pot and a questionable amount of their functionality will be tied to their specific EQMac client that no one seems to like.

Plus there is the client problem looming over it all. That person who made openeq had the right idea it's another critical piece that basically HAS to happen. If I had a client I could provide people I'd pay for advertising to build a EQ PVP community by appealing to the larger PVP MMO community but since I can't provide the client you're always at the mercy of a tiny community of people and can't organically grow. With the level of effort mentioned with this client and the above you're looking at roughly a $1 million effort as a rough estimate if you paid for developers to implement everything. I'm just reflecting on the state of things in general. I don't like where EQemu is as a project but I certainly didn't put in the 20 years of work so I can't complain.

Honestly, that would be awesome if it could be done! Project1999 and all other EQEmu servers have never been truly classic and its a real shame. The Titanium UI irrevocably changes the classic experience. I believe one other project called "EQClassic" was working on reversing a lot of that but it never panned out. I wonder if anything can be gathered from that?

http://www.eqclassic.org/index.php

The way the loginserver works today with pinned server categories it will always be difficult to gain legitimacy with players who see your servers are literally "beneath" a selection of other servers that is primarily just a certain group of developers of EQEmu.

So true... that was the first thing I noticed. It will be difficult to bring new people in when the server isn't listed on top in the "Legends" and "Preferred" sections.

[azxten]

This is the future of emulated EQ. Maybe not this client but one like it.

https://github.com/daeken/OpenEQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moLBr4B8PoE

Currently "re3" a GTA reverse engineered client is being sued by Take Two for doing exactly this. They're also reusing art assets like this from the original game and saying you need to obtain a copy of the game to get those assets. It's nearly an identical legal situation. The devs of that project haven't folded yet and it's still available on Github but there hasn't been any news I saw in the past year or so since they were sued. I am hoping to see how that case ends soon because it will set a legal precedent about this situation and for me at least would be motivation to build a client knowing it is legally viable.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/grand-theft-auto-modders-have-decided-to-fight-take-twos-lawsuit/

There is an unofficial TAKP Wiki that has a link to a .zip file of EQMac client hosted on dropbox. I'm not willing to play legal whack a mole like that. "Oh we don't endorse providing the client as TAKP. Some fans have a Wiki where it is provided." "Oh we don't provide the file on the Wiki. Someone uploaded it to Dropbox not us." It's funny because that is probably a more sound legal strategy than an actually legal reverse engineered client where they can squeeze your nuts with legal fees even though they'll lose in the end.

[azxten]

Just made a toon!

Sweet let me know what you think, provide some feedback on the forums I'll convert things to bug reports.

[Gustoo]

Does the Alkabor project somehow have the real server side client from
The live alkabor server?

If so abandon titanium and use that. That was a classic server launched in the heyday. It’s differences will be superior to the differences of the emu client

[azxten]

Does the Alkabor project somehow have the real server side client from
The live alkabor server?

If so abandon titanium and use that. That was a classic server launched in the heyday. It’s differences will be superior to the differences of the emu client

They have an older client that predates Titanium I'm not sure when it's from exactly. They claim to be the "more classic" server because they use this client and also have some kind of data capture from the EQ Mac server during a closer to Velious era which informs their NPC positions and other details. For example they say they capture the type of face NPC had, etc.

Personally I'm like I really don't give a fuck if an NPC has the right face or not if channeling is still broken BUT TAKP also has classic channeling and it was one of their devs who really found that evidence I built my case on. They already fixed this.

I have an idea for a grand project that I might disappear to work on for a bit but I think it could make everything better for classic EQ.

[Records]

With love Azxten,

Your map is terrible, especially since it has custom aspects for where you zone to.
- If you provide the zone connections in a readable format, I can help recreate it.
- e.g. (Steamfont > Lesser Faydark, Steamfont > (Prev Akanon) Butcherblock)

Creating your own login server/Going against a login server that everyone uses is probably not the right move, for the EQ or EQ PVP community.
- It's a timesink, where you could be spending time on developing a better pvp server.
- How bad is the data segregation vs an unpopulated server, with extra steps?
- I would rather have exposure to the general community of EQemu players, rather than split communities up. Think about longevity of most EQemu servers, and especially EQ Pvp, they die - which makes people feel like they've wasted their time. If your goal is to focus on a long lasting PVP server, people wouldn't have to question if they're wasting their time or not. They want some stability.

[azxten]

Your map is terrible, especially since it has custom aspects for where you zone to.
- If you provide the zone connections in a readable format, I can help recreate it.
- e.g. (Steamfont > Lesser Faydark, Steamfont > (Prev Akanon) Butcherblock)

Creating your own login server/Going against a login server that everyone uses is probably not the right move, for the EQ or EQ PVP community.
- It's a timesink, where you could be spending time on developing a better pvp server.
- How bad is the data segregation vs an unpopulated server, with extra steps?
- I would rather have exposure to the general community of EQemu players, rather than split communities up. Think about longevity of most EQemu servers, and especially EQ Pvp, they die - which makes people feel like they've wasted their time. If your goal is to focus on a long lasting PVP server, people wouldn't have to question if they're wasting their time or not. They want some stability.

I agree, the map is terrible. It's based on this map which I wanted to use because it lets you easily visualize distance to things and team positions. It's not a good map for players though.

https://www.eqmaps.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/World-2000-03-01-SoV.bmp

[Records]

I'm not trying to cut down ideas, but wouldn't it be easier to leave the world/zones as is, because people are familiar with where things are. Then instead a better concept would be to provide translocators to places that should be more accessible due to teaming?

[Old_PVP]

I'm not trying to cut down ideas, but wouldn't it be easier to leave the world/zones as is, because people are familiar with where things are. Then instead a better concept would be to provide translocators to places that should be more accessible due to teaming?


I disagree. I think keeping the map this way accomplishes several things which would benefit the server. The theme of this server is a war for Faydwer. Not Norrath.


Keeping all the classic dungeons in allows for better itemization and balance for each team.
Having them connect the way they do allows for the world to remain small, without needing all the worthless connecting zones.
A smaller world benefits the smaller PVP population, making the world feel more alive and full of fights.
Custom dungeon zonelines allow for PVP back doors into enemy territory, which is good.
Why should anyone care about what "people are familiar with"? That's one of the main reasons EQ can never be like it was in 1999 because people are complete experts when it comes to this game.
Change can be good and refreshing.

[Gustoo]

Yes a custom map is good. Translocators suck. It’s quite easy to change where zone lines take you.

[Zuranthium]

Yes a custom map is good. Translocators suck.

100%

[Jimjam]

Agreed to avoid using translocators.

Don't feel like you need to use the entire dungeon when you drop one in from Antonica. By changing the points in the dungeon where the zonelines are, so you only use a fraction of a dungeon, you can keep it feeling fresh and avoid bloating the size of the world.

[azxten]

I'm deep down the classic rabbit hole now. The good news is I think I can actually make a classic server that is actually better than P99, the bad news is it's going to take awhile like on the order of a year depending on how many off shored researchers and coders I hire. I could do some kind of retarded classic server but I'm not going out like that.

My boats will work with full collision and I'll lord it over the P99 staff. I might just be able to get boats fixed and then strong arm them into giving me all their classic work in exchange for working boats. They love those boats.

[Gustoo]

I love boats too. Trade for some database in a friendly manner, or something else in a friendly manner.

If you deliver on half of what you say, eq classic weirdos are going to be reaping some great benefits from your work

[magnetaress]

Would be awesome if tru p99 did A LOT of really gud werk no doubt about it, but they didn't go the extra mile with certain mechanics for whatever reason and that is ok hopes and prayers

[Jimjam]

Would be awesome if tru p99 did A LOT of really gud werk no doubt about it, but they didn't go the extra mile with certain mechanics for whatever reason and that is ok hopes and prayers

It's cos the staff are secretly shareholders in DAP, and have financial incentive for the boats to be undesirable travel options.

[Gustoo]

lol thats a terrible thing to suspect.

[Ananka]

"Mellon." Speak friend and enter. It was a different time then for Elves and Dwarves.

[azxten]

Getting closer to my Vision for recreating classic. Confirmed one piece of the puzzle works as I expected.

https://pvpeq.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=38

This is not the greatest emulated elf vs dwarf simulator in the world, no, this is just a tribute. You gotta believe me. and I wish you were there...

[magnetaress]

Just give me GM icecommet plz

[Tyronius of Midnight]

Very naive.

[Twil]

I played a little on the custom server the other day. I created a dwarf rogue. Then figured out that by hailing doctor tocks (or something) standing at the BB/Kaladim ZL, I could become a Shaman, Bard, or a third class I don't remember. I became a Shaman. The client crashed, but when I logged back in I had a dwarf Shaman. Then I became a Bard. Client crashed again, but when I logged back on I was a bard. Got 1 level in Bard, but when I went back it wouldn't let me change levels again.
I did note that you seem to lose XP every time you change class. Not a big deal since you can only do it at level 1.
I chose bard because I didn't think I could get the Shaman spells. But when I got to level 2 I automatically got all my Bard spells. So then I created a new Dwarf specifically for the purpose of becoming a shaman. Got to level 4 or 5 I think. Super nice to just get all my spells automatically.
I never made it out of BB. I died a few times, it was nice to have all my gear stay and even nicer to have my memorized spells stay.
No one else was in the zones I was in, so I didn't get to interact with anyone. Was fun to level up super fast though. I'll try to get on more and see if I can get high enough level to make it into gfay.

[magnetaress]

I played a little on the custom server the other day. I created a dwarf rogue. Then figured out that by hailing doctor tocks (or something) standing at the BB/Kaladim ZL, I could become a Shaman, Bard, or a third class I don't remember. I became a Shaman. The client crashed, but when I logged back in I had a dwarf Shaman. Then I became a Bard. Client crashed again, but when I logged back on I was a bard. Got 1 level in Bard, but when I went back it wouldn't let me change levels again.
I did note that you seem to lose XP every time you change class. Not a big deal since you can only do it at level 1.
I chose bard because I didn't think I could get the Shaman spells. But when I got to level 2 I automatically got all my Bard spells. So then I created a new Dwarf specifically for the purpose of becoming a shaman. Got to level 4 or 5 I think. Super nice to just get all my spells automatically.
I never made it out of BB. I died a few times, it was nice to have all my gear stay and even nicer to have my memorized spells stay.
No one else was in the zones I was in, so I didn't get to interact with anyone. Was fun to level up super fast though. I'll try to get on more and see if I can get high enough level to make it into gfay.
sounds cool ))

imo ezmode eq sorta but not really cuz u know Axzten is gonna make it hardcore classic mechanically so fun times! just better QoL

[Gustoo]

Seems fun and not having to get spells and train skills does let you bomb around a lot more care free.

Dwarfs should have always been a bard race and a shaman race. I guess being a cleric race precludes them from shaman hood but bard for sure

[azxten]

I played a little on the custom server the other day. I created a dwarf rogue. Then figured out that by hailing doctor tocks (or something) standing at the BB/Kaladim ZL, I could become a Shaman, Bard, or a third class I don't remember. I became a Shaman. The client crashed, but when I logged back in I had a dwarf Shaman. Then I became a Bard. Client crashed again, but when I logged back on I was a bard. Got 1 level in Bard, but when I went back it wouldn't let me change levels again.
I did note that you seem to lose XP every time you change class. Not a big deal since you can only do it at level 1.
I chose bard because I didn't think I could get the Shaman spells. But when I got to level 2 I automatically got all my Bard spells. So then I created a new Dwarf specifically for the purpose of becoming a shaman. Got to level 4 or 5 I think. Super nice to just get all my spells automatically.
I never made it out of BB. I died a few times, it was nice to have all my gear stay and even nicer to have my memorized spells stay.
No one else was in the zones I was in, so I didn't get to interact with anyone. Was fun to level up super fast though. I'll try to get on more and see if I can get high enough level to make it into gfay.

Sweet thanks for trying things out. Getting kicked when you change classes is required to reload your class.

[azxten]

Very naive.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/harveybirdman/images/8/8d/Mentok.jpg

Weeoooo Weooo....

I hope the Dark Men of Odus will approve of my more classic classic server. This paradigmatic enterprise abounds with erudition.

Me big Ogre you not think it be like it do but it was. Ogre book store shame Dark Men book store.

[azxten]

I'm stripping everything out of EQemu that doesn't exist after Planes of Power. Going to do an open source classic emulator fork that includes quests and database. I took out instancing, tasks, adventures, expeditions, ldon mechanics, and some other crap so far and still have it building and functioning.

I'm thinking the functionality will be that you set a timestamp for "server start time" and a timer counts from there in order to change functionality as appropriate. Only changes which last more than a month would be included. All of these changes will have rule values to turn them on/off and so will potential "overpowered" classic mechanics like AE kiting, fine steel pet delay, etc. This allows server owners to easily adjust classic mechanics to their preference.

My bug list is currently at about 1,200 bugs I expect it will be just under 10k bugs when I finish. These will be prioritized in terms of impact to the player with the most important things being fixed first.

This will be the basis for multiple servers. I am thinking traditional classic, legends, roleplay, rz/tz/vz/sz/discord rule set servers. Idea being one of each type of all server types that existed. The PvP rules functionality will be the first thing I cut a PR for to contribute code back to EQEmu. Legends server would probably be a code driven randomization of quests, item drops, etc and a potential idea I'm considering is to implement AI created custom encounters for players. This would be similar to games like Left 4 Dead where the AI considers your ability in terms of HP, guns, etc and provides unique gameplay encounters where you can still meet the level of challenge. FaydWAR will also exist using this forked emu as an example of how to take the code and make a custom classic server easily.

Servers will go to PoP this is a much better place to dead end a server than Velious due to the additional functionality and raid content. Servers would rotate in such a way that there is always one server about to add an expansion or start over again every couple months so there is always a "new" thing going on somewhere. Servers restart awhile after PoP with players getting dumped into a permanent blue or red server type. I also have an idea for a custom mechanic to address the current raid bottlenecks that should avoid non-classic experience while letting players have more opportunity to experience challenging raiding.

My hope is to produce something that is better than P99 and fully open so anyone can enjoy a classic era server. If people want to play on these servers that's great but my focus is going to be on producing a better experience even if no one plays it except my friends and family. As an aside P99 still has major bugs from 2010 that have never gotten a response. Like I said, about 10k bugs in total I expect are still relevant. They're probably drowning in them the scope is larger than I ever imagined. All the more reason to have an open project instead of relying on a couple people who seem burnt out and likely rightly so.

[Old_PVP]

Very ambitious project. I like it! So some of your servers will include Luclin as well? Probably a smart move cause AAs would create nearly endless content for people as well as increase the raid scene. I like there is still the option of traditional classic as well.

Keep up the good work!

[azxten]

Very ambitious project. I like it! So some of your servers will include Luclin as well? Probably a smart move cause AAs would create nearly endless content for people as well as increase the raid scene. I like there is still the option of traditional classic as well.

Keep up the good work!

Yeah Luclin has some key functions. The casino can also help with plat inflation and de-emphasize legacy item importance.

I'd really like to see people stop remaking classic servers over and over. There are so many dead classic EQemu projects where people did some coding and then quit. A big problem is that they're also "custom classic" servers like FaydWAR so the code is all jumbled together mixing classic changes with custom and none of these have ever built a classic progression framework like P99 is using so that content can change based on a preconfigured timeline.

P99 broke tracking while nerfing it to be "classic" and didn't fix it for months or years after it should have worked again. Same with immolate. Their last patch broke spell fading messages and it will be fixed "when there is time." Meanwhile major core functionality continues to be ignored like the resist system, channeling, push mechanics, etc. This kind of two steps back one step forward coding is just sad. P99 staff remains insular and has declined offers to help.

Ok, I'll go reinvent the wheel for the 100th time but hopefully this can be the last time.

[magnetaress]

Yeah Luclin has some key functions. The casino can also help with plat inflation and de-emphasize legacy item importance.

I'd really like to see people stop remaking classic servers over and over. There are so many dead classic EQemu projects where people did some coding and then quit. A big problem is that they're also "custom classic" servers like FaydWAR so the code is all jumbled together mixing classic changes with custom and none of these have ever built a classic progression framework like P99 is using so that content can change based on a preconfigured timeline.

P99 broke tracking while nerfing it to be "classic" and didn't fix it for months or years after it should have worked again. Same with immolate. Their last patch broke spell fading messages and it will be fixed "when there is time." Meanwhile major core functionality continues to be ignored like the resist system, channeling, push mechanics, etc. This kind of two steps back one step forward coding is just sad. P99 staff remains insular and has declined offers to help.

Ok, I'll go reinvent the wheel for the 100th time but hopefully this can be the last time.

They're busy gearing their 5th enchanter alts in NtoV on green lol.

[Twil]

Having trouble on the PVPeq.com forum (I forgot my password and haven't been able to reset it), so I'll post my thoughts here. I have a level 30 dwarf shaman.

-Mana goes to 100% after you level, HP doesn't. Wasn't expecting it, but I know if I'm close to leveling I can go all out and I won't have to med after.
-At some point your gear stays with your body when you die, not sure what level that starts happening.
-Some of my spells seem to be more powerful than the Wiki suggests. Healing heals for 175 HP, when the wiki says it should heal for 100. My level 5 Frost Rift says it should hit for max 15 on the wiki, but I think it was hitting for something close to 75. Made going through the lower levels really fast.
-Some of my spells seem to cost more mana than the wiki says. See Envenomed Breath for an example (level 24). This is based off watching my mana, and trying to cast the spell when I have just over the amount of mana the spell says it takes.
-You get a few new spells each level, for the next spell level coming up. Was weird at first but I've gotten used to it. Some spells you get are labeled as "Cannot Use", so I just file those away at the end of my spell book.
-Why no SOW?? Was sad to see that was one of the cannot use spells.
-I haven't been able to test out any PVP mechanics because no one else has ever been on when I have been on. There was a GM on once, but they wouldn't talk to me.

[azxten]

Having trouble on the PVPeq.com forum (I forgot my password and haven't been able to reset it), so I'll post my thoughts here. I have a level 30 dwarf shaman.

-Mana goes to 100% after you level, HP doesn't. Wasn't expecting it, but I know if I'm close to leveling I can go all out and I won't have to med after.
-At some point your gear stays with your body when you die, not sure what level that starts happening.
-Some of my spells seem to be more powerful than the Wiki suggests. Healing heals for 175 HP, when the wiki says it should heal for 100. My level 5 Frost Rift says it should hit for max 15 on the wiki, but I think it was hitting for something close to 75. Made going through the lower levels really fast.
-Some of my spells seem to cost more mana than the wiki says. See Envenomed Breath for an example (level 24). This is based off watching my mana, and trying to cast the spell when I have just over the amount of mana the spell says it takes.
-You get a few new spells each level, for the next spell level coming up. Was weird at first but I've gotten used to it. Some spells you get are labeled as "Cannot Use", so I just file those away at the end of my spell book.
-Why no SOW?? Was sad to see that was one of the cannot use spells.
-I haven't been able to test out any PVP mechanics because no one else has ever been on when I have been on. There was a GM on once, but they wouldn't talk to me.

Thanks. There is a setting to turn off HP at 100% when you level but it doesn't include mana I guess. I think P99 had the same issue they had to fix. Gear staying on you is supposed to be a low level mechanic below level 10 I think I'll have to look into that. The spell stuff is expected I have to import the P99 spells still. Getting a few spells each level is because the scrolls likely use the newer spell levels where the game was changed to work this way but I also have the min expansion set to classic so it probably won't let you use those spells until the usual 4/5 levels. I'll have to adjust the scribe level of the spells too. SoW gets glitched when it is scribed you should be able to buy the normal SoW spell from a vendor and scribe/use that instead. There are multiple versions of the SoW spell and the one that gets auto scribed is a weird version no one can use.

You probably won't see anyone on for awhile I'm not promoting the server at all. I've taken this detour into getting classic mechanics functioning first.

[Twil]

Good to know I can just buy SoW as normal, thanks!

It's a fun time killer, and it's kind of satisfying to kill a yellow at level 25 and gain an entire level :)

[azxten]

I had no idea this open source client was so far along.

https://lanterneq.com/media

They have a shitload of work to do still and haven't implemented any network functions but this looks promising.

[Encroaching Death]

I had no idea this open source client was so far along.

https://lanterneq.com/media

They have a shitload of work to do still and haven't implemented any network functions but this looks promising.

They recreated the original UI! :eek:

[Old_PVP]

I had no idea this open source client was so far along.

https://lanterneq.com/media

They have a shitload of work to do still and haven't implemented any network functions but this looks promising.

Pretty interesting. I had never heard of this project. Looks like they were given access to EQclassic server and are reverse engineering it. Very nice!

[Gustoo]

What was eq classic server?

[Tradesonred]

They recreated the original UI! :eek:

Are you encroach from Rallos btw?

I have a feeling id take a look at the original UI and go oh, neat and then flip back to the modern one.

I havent gotten around to try the server, for some reason my client is still linked to original servers and i didnt feel like looking it up.

[Old_PVP]

What was eq classic server?

It was an EQ project trying to bring back true classic, UI and all. It ended up folding up, but they completed a lot of code & made significant progress.

http://www.eqclassic.org/index.php

http://eqclassic.de/wiki/Main_Page

These LanternEQ folks are making use of some of that hard work:

While we are not directly associated with any other projects, EQClassic developer Harakiri has generously allowed us to use a local test server for reverse engineering. Without this, progress would be much slower and in some cases impossible.

[surron]

I'm stripping everything out of EQemu that doesn't exist after Planes of Power. Going to do an open source classic emulator fork that includes quests and database. I took out instancing, tasks, adventures, expeditions, ldon mechanics, and some other crap so far and still have it building and functioning.

I'm thinking the functionality will be that you set a timestamp for "server start time" and a timer counts from there in order to change functionality as appropriate. Only changes which last more than a month would be included. All of these changes will have rule values to turn them on/off and so will potential "overpowered" classic mechanics like AE kiting, fine steel pet delay, etc. This allows server owners to easily adjust classic mechanics to their preference.

My bug list is currently at about 1,200 bugs I expect it will be just under 10k bugs when I finish. These will be prioritized in terms of impact to the player with the most important things being fixed first.

This will be the basis for multiple servers. I am thinking traditional classic, legends, roleplay, rz/tz/vz/sz/discord rule set servers. Idea being one of each type of all server types that existed. The PvP rules functionality will be the first thing I cut a PR for to contribute code back to EQEmu. Legends server would probably be a code driven randomization of quests, item drops, etc and a potential idea I'm considering is to implement AI created custom encounters for players. This would be similar to games like Left 4 Dead where the AI considers your ability in terms of HP, guns, etc and provides unique gameplay encounters where you can still meet the level of challenge. FaydWAR will also exist using this forked emu as an example of how to take the code and make a custom classic server easily.

Servers will go to PoP this is a much better place to dead end a server than Velious due to the additional functionality and raid content. Servers would rotate in such a way that there is always one server about to add an expansion or start over again every couple months so there is always a "new" thing going on somewhere. Servers restart awhile after PoP with players getting dumped into a permanent blue or red server type. I also have an idea for a custom mechanic to address the current raid bottlenecks that should avoid non-classic experience while letting players have more opportunity to experience challenging raiding.

My hope is to produce something that is better than P99 and fully open so anyone can enjoy a classic era server. If people want to play on these servers that's great but my focus is going to be on producing a better experience even if no one plays it except my friends and family. As an aside P99 still has major bugs from 2010 that have never gotten a response. Like I said, about 10k bugs in total I expect are still relevant. They're probably drowning in them the scope is larger than I ever imagined. All the more reason to have an open project instead of relying on a couple people who seem burnt out and likely rightly so.

You could direct your time to helping "eqemu peq expansions"... idk the state, but a lot of work from eqemu on "TLPing" the eqemu source, so you can set an expansion and it will only have stuff for that era. But what you're doing is still cool.

[magnetaress]

The future is Lantern EQ because faction can't even work classicly and right, especially under titanium or other closed source clients. This was kinda the last straw for me and emu. Even if as a player the proper classic configuration would be a hinderence. And the source and proof is dead. It died sometime after 2018. The ppl with all of the proof and data sitting in their laps want it secret. And they don't want to fix it here. Can't say as I blame em. It really isn't worth the time. Especially not for the green and blue raid scene. As it just doesn't really effect them anyway enough to fix for them. They'd not even notice.

They should contribute all that backend data and evidence to a FOSS project tho b4 they completely abandon it.

[Jimjam]

The future is Lantern EQ because faction can't even work classicly and right, especially under titanium or other closed source clients. This was kinda the last straw for me and emu. Even if as a player the proper classic configuration would be a hinderence. And the source and proof is dead. It died sometime after 2018. The ppl with all of the proof and data sitting in their laps want it secret. And they don't want to fix it here. Can't say as I blame em. It really isn't worth the time. Especially not for the green and blue raid scene. As it just doesn't really effect them anyway enough to fix for them. They'd not even notice.

They should contribute all that backend data and evidence to a FOSS project tho b4 they completely abandon it.

I'm in two minds about feeding it back. Obviously it was a lot of work, so I can see how they would want to protect it... but on the other hand, the community has provided a constant >1000 volunteer play testers over a period of 10 years so it would be nice for the server to give back something to the wider community for that service.

[magnetaress]

I'm in two minds about feeding it back. Obviously it was a lot of work, so I can see how they would want to protect it... but on the other hand, the community has provided a constant >1000 volunteer play testers over a period of 10 years so it would be nice for the server to give back something to the wider community for that service.
They keep the titanium hacks secret for good reason to stop cheaters. And there's a point that if everyone sees the database of drops it just makes it easier to automate farming and quest exploitation. So to discourage it its not easy to get. Takes a lot more effort to scrape the wiki. And that doesn't give exact locations pathiing data triggers and tags generally.

[Twil]

More notes:
I bought SoW, but it won't let me scribe it to my spell book because I already have SoW scribed.
When I get an NPC to like 50% health and zone out then zone back in, the NPCs health goes up slowly - on normal EQ once you break agro the NPC health goes up really fast.

[azxten]

More notes:
I bought SoW, but it won't let me scribe it to my spell book because I already have SoW scribed.
When I get an NPC to like 50% health and zone out then zone back in, the NPCs health goes up slowly - on normal EQ once you break agro the NPC health goes up really fast.

Which character is yours? Shamz? I'll fix your SoW spell. I'm surprised there are so many characters already I guess people have been stopping by. I am focused on the "ClassicEmu" project so haven't been updating things on the beta server.

[azxten]

Have something basic together now...

https://github.com/ClassicEmuAdm?tab=repositories

This strips instances, tasks, expeditions, adventures, spells beyond level 65, LDoN functionality, most items from expansions beyond PoP, eliminates Defiant armor drops and other irrelevant global loot drops, changes weapon models back to classic, all zones beyond PoP and associated data, all quest components in zones beyond PoP, and probably more small stuff I'm forgetting about.

There will be one additional repository for an open source dll injection to implement classic functionality on the client side similar to P99 but without P99's anti-cheat/obfuscation functions.

Still playing around with an idea but I think I'd like to offer character exports/imports. You would be able to export your character data as a .sql file so you can reload your exact character in another emulator. The main point of this will be that I also want to offer precompiled binaries with all of these files bundled up. You would click "Play My Character" and essentially get a download of the emulator ready to start with your character data from a public server preloaded. This way any progress you make on an emu server you can save for your personal use. For example a guild could all export their character data and load it into a single private emulator for their members. A group of friends could save their characters from a dying emu server and play them together. I'd like to try to extend this somehow maybe allowing people to copy characters from PVE to PVP servers. What I think would be really cool but probably not practical would be to create a ClassicEmu grouping of servers run by different people which all support copying characters between them. The server operators would have to be part of a trusted group that would not run illegitimate servers and so the character data is somewhat legit between servers. Let players take their character between multiple servers with different rule sets without having to "start over" and hopefully encouraging more cross play between servers.

Someone above mentioned the projecteq expansions project. That seems to be dead for the last 2 years but I do plan to continue using the min/max expansion database fields where possible so changes could be easily implemented on the projecteq database if they want. Same with changes to eqemu, although this is a stripped down classic emu fork changes can be merged for most things.

As an example of why this sucks though. Look at weapon models, the PEQ database changed to new age models for everything because that is how live is. These models are determined by "idfile" field in the "npc_types" table which has an entry for every NPC in the game. Except this table only defines the NPC it has no min/max expansion field. There are spawn tables that refer to the npc_types table which do have min/max expansions. This means if you wanted "classic weapon models" to be something that is turned on/off using the database fields they added you would have to duplicate every NPC in the game who holds fine steel as one example just to specify a new idfile and then change the min/max expansions for both copies of the NPC to be pre/post this weapon model change. That is so inefficient and tedious compared to just changing all the weapon idfile fields to the proper model and being done because those models won't change until after PoP therefore we don't need to maintain two copies of all the NPCs for a classic server. The simplistic min/max expansion concept doesn't translate well to situations like this. It is poor systems design to architect something like that would require you to duplicate tons of data. Instead you should have "idfile2" field and then you have a mapping of min/max expansion which maps to these multiple idfile fields. That will become.. an incredible amount of effort when you consider all the ways this will need to be done beyond just idfile. You could also change EQemu and use a rule value to load old/new models but then you're not changing ProjectEQ and this isn't part of the database. How do rule values get turned on/off per expansion? That support doesn't exist currently. It's probably 10x more work to build a classic EQ rule system into existing EQemu/ProjectEQ than it is to just create a classic emu and not worry about ever having to turn certain things on/off that will never exist in the "classic" era.

[azxten]

Next step is to start implementing this progression functionality while salvaging as much of the existing min/max expansion and existing EQEmu rule/database value checking as possible. I jump in the emulator and mess around fixing the database as I notice things as well when the coding gets boring. Beyond this I'm still working on a master bug list for implementing more classic details as well as possibly creating a test framework to avoid unknowingly breaking intended functionality when changing things. This list will also be publicly available.

Have to setup my classicemu website and provide my more newb friendly emulator setup instructions ideally just run the exe to start the server on Windows possibly using an sqlite database to avoid having to setup a database. This should be performant enough for people wanting to mess around on their own server solo or with a few friends.

I'll probably start playing on TAKP because it sounds like their core mechanics are way more classic than P99. Need to start reverse engineering some things but they're also very open about a lot of the functionality and provide the pseudocode. I want to compare P99/TAKP as well and luckily I still have a lot of various classes/levels on P99. Much of the work I'm doing might be wasted when/if they open source their code but whatever I'm having fun for now and the future is never certain. Also I need to redeploy Faydwar using this new classic project.

Oh and I got the classic boats working using a disgusting hack but it works. Invisible 90 degree inclined doors with increased size that the boat moves along with it using the quest API and some custom packet functionality to only despawn/respawns doors for players on the boat to avoid the client side lag this causes to players on land who might be pulling mobs, etc who would notice this stuttering. The quest code moves the player in relation to the door when the door moves so if you're in one corner and run to the other the next tick of the doors moving your player still appears in the same place on the door that you moved to. There is some handling of changing door heading to the boat heading and how this also has to change player movement. This is a hilarious hack to me and almost definitely is going to dump players in the ocean especially if their computer connection lags, I love it. I'll probably add some kind of correction logic to catch players who probably glitched off the boat unintentionally so they get warped back to the deck unless they intentionally ran off of it. Ideally I can get a door model onto a spawn path which would be a much smoother experience for those on the boat. Currently it's pretty jerky but also reminds me of classic and is still functional in terms of moving around the boat and even fighting NPCs on it. The funny thing is the door packet thing means players on the shore watching the boat see a smooth sailing ship but players on the boat are in for a bumpy wild ride.

As far as I know that's the first time the classic boat models have "worked" since 2004 or whatever. Now that I think about it it's probably the first time you could ride the classic boats and also cast spells/fight on them since long ago I'm not sure when they added the "too distracted" message and blocked spells.

[Gustoo]

I don’t think you could ever cast on boats, could be wrong

[azxten]

I don’t think you could ever cast on boats, could be wrong

You could early on I suspect if I look at the original EQ client files it won't have the "too distracted to cast" string proving it didn't exist when the first CD shipped at least but I could be wrong too. I forgot to consider the "too distracted to cast" message also helps locate the boat functionality. Did some reverse engineering and testing stuff but that should be a lot better starting place.

[Twil]

Which character is yours? Shamz? I'll fix your SoW spell. I'm surprised there are so many characters already I guess people have been stopping by. I am focused on the "ClassicEmu" project so haven't been updating things on the beta server.

Yeah, I’m Shamz

[Tassador]

Probably never been so concern about someone in my life than this wall of text guy.

[azxten]

Yeah, I’m Shamz

Should be fixed now.

Probably never been so concern about someone in my life than this wall of text guy.

Thanks for your concern.

[Tradesonred]

Probably never been so concern about someone in my life than this wall of text guy.

You should start worrying about the guy with the sad face looking back at you in the mirror each morning.

[Tassador]

You should start worrying about the guy with the sad face looking back at you in the mirror each morning.

You always worry about yourself first if not you don’t love yourself and can’t help others. Hope this helps you on your pursuit of eq novels of servers that are never happening.

[Twil]

Started a Monk over the weekend. Kick doesn't seem to be working - no matter what I tried to kick, it said the mob was invulnerable. Same thing happened when I got the first monk ability (roundhouse kick or something) - never would land because everything was invulnerable. Dwarf monk for the record.

[Twil]

Should be fixed now.



Thanks! I am not sure when I'll be able to log back on, my laptop died over the weekend. Maybe I can get my desktop to work again, we'll see.

[Twil]

Oh, last thing. I've started to see a few other people online. I tried talking with a few, but I couldn't understand them and I don't think they could understand me. Turns out my language was set to Elvish (I am a dwarf). Is there a way to change the default language? If not, you might need to let people know to check which language they are talking in.

[magnetaress]

Good to know the most important feature of the server is working )))

[azxten]

Oh, last thing. I've started to see a few other people online. I tried talking with a few, but I couldn't understand them and I don't think they could understand me. Turns out my language was set to Elvish (I am a dwarf). Is there a way to change the default language? If not, you might need to let people know to check which language they are talking in.

I thought I had confirmed the default language was first in this list but I guess not. I gave different races a few starting points in enemy languages. Everyone gets Elvish/Dwarvish 100 for their team but then I threw in some other stuff so that hopefully skill ups would occur without training. The "common tongue" is always Dwarvish or Elvish for a team but this other stuff still exists with some arbitrary levels for each race to add flavor.

I agree this could use better messaging if the defaults aren't working. I just made a Dwarf Monk and he defaulted to Dark Speech. I'll see what I can do. I could just remove the enemy languages and set each team to know all the racial languages of their team but that is kind of lame.

case DARK_ELF:
{
pp->languages[LANG_ELVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_SPEECH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_ELDER_ELVISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_ELVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_DWARVISH] = 15;
pp->languages[LANG_GNOMISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_HALFLING] = 5;
break;
}
case DWARF:
{
pp->languages[LANG_DWARVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_GNOMISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_HALFLING] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_ELVISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_ELDER_ELVISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_ELVISH] = 15;
break;
}
case GNOME:
{
pp->languages[LANG_DWARVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_GNOMISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_HALFLING] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_ELVISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_ELDER_ELVISH] = 15;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_ELVISH] = 5;
break;
}
case HALF_ELF:
{
pp->languages[LANG_ELVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_ELDER_ELVISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_ELVISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_DWARVISH] = 15;
pp->languages[LANG_GNOMISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_HALFLING] = 5;
break;
}
case HALFLING:
{
pp->languages[LANG_DWARVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_HALFLING] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_GNOMISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_ELVISH] = 15;
pp->languages[LANG_ELDER_ELVISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_ELVISH] = 5;
break;
}
case HIGH_ELF:
{
pp->languages[LANG_ELVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_ELDER_ELVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_ELVISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_DWARVISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_GNOMISH] = 15;
pp->languages[LANG_HALFLING] = 5;
break;
}
case WOOD_ELF:
{
pp->languages[LANG_ELVISH] = 100;
pp->languages[LANG_ELDER_ELVISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_DARK_ELVISH] = 50;
pp->languages[LANG_HALFLING] = 15;
pp->languages[LANG_DWARVISH] = 5;
pp->languages[LANG_GNOMISH] = 5;
break;
}


The Monk kick thing I just tested starting as a Dwarf Cleric. You get small patchwork boots but once you change to a Monk these aren't actually usable anymore. If you remove the boots kick starts working and you can't put them back on. I'll have to adjust gear when changing to monk probably for both hands/feet to avoid the weirdness in those attack calculations which consider what you're wearing there if you are a monk. Also sadly the monk attack animations for things like flying kick don't work on the short races. This also raises questions about itemization for custom race Monks. Small patchwork won't allow monks but normal size does. Probably need to add Monk to small armor, checking Wus for example it only allows Human/Iksar. Same for shiverback hide stuff. So yeah need a monk equipment adjustment to include elves/dwarves. Same for Bard/Shaman gear. Thanks.

[Jimjam]

Deriving damage from worn AC is a far far far post classic mechanic. Tear it out!

You’re gonna have to do a load of database work applying ‘monk’ to usable classes on much small leather gear and adding dwarf to monk only gear.

[Twil]

Yeah, I had looted some bronze knuckles that I was going to use for the monk, but dwarfs can't equip them.

Do you have a full list of the possible race/class combos available somewhere? I'm not seeing it on your website.

[Twil]

By the way, for Shamz, when I try to scribe SoW it says "You will have to achieve level 255 before you can scribe the Spirit of Wolf."

[Twil]

My casting specialization skills keep getting reset to 1. Not sure what's up with that. It just says "Your spell casting specializations skills have been reset. Only 1 primary specialization skill is allowed."

[azxten]

My casting specialization skills keep getting reset to 1. Not sure what's up with that. It just says "Your spell casting specializations skills have been reset. Only 1 primary specialization skill is allowed."

Probably the auto skill up functionality is coded to set specialization to 1 because they didn't want to max it out and prevent you from choosing. I'm using a preexisting plugin for this functionality. I'll have to fix this same as trade skills maxing out when they probably shouldn't.

Do you have a full list of the possible race/class combos available somewhere?

Not yet but the doctor NPCs allow any race to be a shaman, bard, or monk. Other than that it's base EQ with the exception that Gnomes can be SK/Pal and Halfling can be Ranger. I think.

[azxten]

https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/pull/2610/commits

First commit back to EQEmu server project to make the "PVPSettings" rule values actually work. Currently it just turns PvP on for everyone if you set it to 1. It has values for racial, deity, and discord rulesets but they only signal to the client that you're on this type of server. This is how the client changes the name tag colors for example. Another example is the client showing this message when I was testing and had different deity characters on the same account.

I didn't read anything about EQemu commit process so we'll see if I get a grumpy reply to RTFM.

https://imgur.com/nFhAhfG.png

These changes allow proper attacking between racial/deity teams or FFA for Discord. So as an example if you set the Discord ruleset you can PvP everyone but their name will be blue. This does not include the additional code to set level limits per rule set and other rule set specific mechanics. Just a first step I'll do that later.

I've been doing a lot of bulk changes to the database because it's so easy. No iksars before Kunark, no Vah Shir before Luclin, setting zone min_expansion settings. I trimmed down quests to just "classic" zones and started ordering them by value of rewards in terms of experience and items to ensure everything is set for appropriate expansions or removed.

A lot of bug reports from FaydWAR are fixed now in ClassicEmu I just have to reimplement all the FaydWAR stuff I did that is "classic" in ClassicEmu first. This is what I get for starting a custom classic server before realizing it would be stupid to make such a project when instead I could have a classic server that can be customized. Good thing to redo this work now though.

[Bluesjamforlife]

Excited to see this release Azxten. The only reason I created this account and am on this forum is due to your work.

Please keep an update going as you are, thanks kindly my man. Cheers.

[Rick Sanchez]

How's the progress going Azxten ? have to applaud you for the fresh take.

[azxten]

Going well. I'm preparing for a larger next update. I think it's better to have less frequent but more impressive updates and to formally launch a new community by promoting it outside this thread.

[magnetaress]

This is honestly the server that may get me to reinstall whatever client it is and give myself computer aids again.

The idea alone is perfect for a real custom server. With a classic feel that (maybe) hopefully resspects ppls time better and lets us experience some of that pixelated nostalgia

[Knuckle]

I can't trust someone using dynamic lighting and shadows on everquest, but wish you the best in your endeavors.

[Gustoo]

Who’s using dynamic lighting?

Plz turn it off asap

[magnetaress]

Didn't Rogean forced dynamic lights on in p99?

[Knuckle]

Didn't Rogean forced dynamic lights on in p99?

I don’t think so but one things for sure, shadow users cannot be trusted.

[Gustoo]

He did for green.

I don’t think the dynamic lighting thing was forced for red or blue.

It really made my game look and run terrible but maybe it’s fixed? I haven’t seen complaints from green guys.

[Jimjam]

Didn't Rogean forced dynamic lights on in p99?

Epiphany. Sacrilege.

[magnetaress]

You'll get zero arguments from me. Dynamic lighting is sacrilege.

[Christina.]

what's this servers discord? I might be interested in playing on it If it has enough of a classic feeling.

[magnetaress]

if this server ever launches it will def be the best eq server of all times

[Jazzy]

Will reinstall for this
Crushbone pvp lets goooo

[azxten]

There is no Discord, sorry I'm OG text based. I have no desire to have a harem on the server or get involved in any drama whatsoever.

Still making this and in fact have a lot more time available now to do so. Like I said it will probably take a year for full release though. I'd guess 3-6 months to an actual beta launch.

[magnetaress]

BUMP AND I gave the eqpvp.com forums some love <3

You are the best for being so cool Azxten !

[magnetaress]

Well it's actually pvpeq.com I got it backwards

[EatitNerd]

Dang you fell for the ledbedder troll of a Faydwer only server. Tsk tsk all this work for it to be dead by week 2. There’s a reason why no one has done this in the past (IT WONT WORK). You’re better off putting your efforts into a more classic/realistic approach, that’s what will last a long time and will give you a much higher population.

[magnetaress]

I feel like you are being overly negative Eatitnerd mebbe give Azxten a chance plus all his changes and fixerups will work towards a classic box in the long run.

[Nahuelco]

Pras be! I too have a Faydwer only server idea where pvp is enabled in dungeons and other cities become raid zones. OoT for the evil classes. Trading post at BB docks. Other dungeons accesses by npc/clickable object. Loot rules similar to mischief. The list goes on

[Tradesonred]

Dang you fell for the ledbedder troll of a Faydwer only server. Tsk tsk all this work for it to be dead by week 2. There’s a reason why no one has done this in the past (IT WONT WORK). You’re better off putting your efforts into a more classic/realistic approach, that’s what will last a long time and will give you a much higher population.

Theres just no pop for classic EQ outside of p99. Its not like wow where theres a viable pop for a hundred private servers. Reducing the size of the world, making some QoL changes is the way to go, as next best option.

Saying it wont work without providing any reasoning is not a very convincing argument as the server is viable even with a low population, which is the whole point of it.

[xlimits]

I would suggest that #6 is already like an instanced duel. You haven't really described what would happen if the player that has to scale down gets attacked by others. While you might consider if that falls in with your faction play (or get to it while it's in construction), I assume that the parent scaler would be the lowest level person that got attacked. It would be a shame if the attacker was the parent during an encounter with whichever NPC the defender was attacking at the time.

[magnetaress]

When I am in a deep breathless sleep heart pausing for a full minute and like 4 respirations a minute.

This is the world I go to in my dreams. It's real. It exists. I've been there.

[azxten]

Just waiting on TAKP to cuck out and not release source. Thread is still alive. Either way I want them to say something before I waste my time.

https://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/open-source-server-code.21647/

[magnetaress]

Bump

Feels

Don't waste ur time axz


I went and bumped thee thread thar anyway

[magnetaress]

my dudes

https://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/takp-open-source.25569/

takp is being released!

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=421838

THEY DID IT !!!!! 111

[azxten]

Incredibly based.

[Ezpk]

pvp when?

[Ardok]

The fact they kept their promise and actually released it is legit.

[azxten]

I took a peak at some files. It looks like TAKP source is based on older EQEmu and has not been kept in a merged state. Specifically I wanted to know if they were using the min_expansion/max_expansion fields noted here:

https://docs.eqemu.io/developer/project-peq-expansions/expansion-content-filtering/#multiple-content-flags

These fields don't exist in the database so TAKP version predates this being implemented. Not sure if TAKP has some other mechanism they implemented to be able to roll content out for each era. I'm suspecting they don't and just implemented things as they occurred. For example POP released and all the code just switched to a new version. They might have older source versions tagged to eras but that wasn't released so this is probably the next necessary thing.

Someone needs to now use all the information TAKP dumped but organize it into eras including changes over time. This is a lot easier than getting all the "classic" quests implemented in the first place so this dump is still very useful. Now you just have to know which era to put things and how to change them over time for each era.

Dolalin made an EQ emu archive search engine but I'm thinking this info should instead be used for training an AI model. This is a side project I want to start soon, I wanted to look into llama home brew anyway. My thinking is giving the corpus of classic EQ info to a language model would allow it to create a summary of changes over time. "Tell me how the sneak skill changed over time" and get a list of changes for this one skill with references to patch notes or wherever the info may have come from. I've been reading others who are training language models on specific knowledge domains like this with some success.

This is probably never going to work but I'll know a little more and I'll be able to say I tried to create the ultimate EQ nerd AI. It would be funny to get it posting on the P99 forums.

[magnetaress]

Well the cool thing about the ssource is you can update another project with like the AC armor code formulaars and roll it into ur source now

[azxten]

Well the cool thing about the ssource is you can update another project with like the AC armor code formulaars and roll it into ur source now

These classic mechanics should be available via the min/max_expansion flags or similar mechanics rather than continuing to splinter efforts. Think of how many people have duplicated the same work on mechanics like this doing research, writing code, and then throwing away their work when they realized they could never finish. Those things like AC armor code formulas should just be in modern EQEmu source and controlled via content flags. Set value to True in database if you want classic AC formulas, etc. Set era to Velious and it just works. I'd also like to enable an sqlite database for EQemu. With this and the era switching data filled in it would allow for a "one click" deployment of a classic EQ server on the desktop. No technical steps required and easy to control via configuration values.

This brings me back to the client which I've mentioned before as the final step to a complete single package that can be distributed and allow playing classic EQ. If that project to recreate the client is successful and is compatible with EQEmu servers then EQ could live on. Another angle is the changing laws with regards to archiving software that has been abandoned. It may be possible in the near future to argue that we can distribute the EQ client legally because that software no longer functions alone and has no server support from the company who sold it. You can't take a Velious disc and start playing you have to buy other expansions or use software not contained on the disc. There is no officially provided Velious server only the community open source server can work with these clients. I think Sony openly admitted they don't have any of the classic source so it is provable that they can't make this software work and it is different than modern EQ and truly abandoned. At a minimum it is likely the client could be retained legally today by registered digital archivists and the public could be granted access restricted to a venue like a museum using a self hosted setup like this. It doesn't take much for the law to change and allow for broader archival access particularly as the aging population is replaced with more tech friendly legislators.

Why does this matter to make a single package that can deploy a server and comes with the client? Because then emulated EQ could be easily promoted via simple install mechanism to a general audience rather than just nostalgic EQ nerds. This would allow the population to hit 10k+ across multiple servers and EQ PvP might actually happen again. It also means that even if the MMO nature of emulated EQ dies with a dwindling population at least you can easily enjoy the content on your own in the future. Currently we are one legal order away from P99, TAKP, etc all being shut down and all of their code erased. With TAKPs release they have almost fully secured the future of classic EQ, it's hugely important from an archive perspective to have this data out there instead of in the hands of a couple people.

Currently I don't think PvP is ever going to happen again even if a new P99 PvP server launches. There are only maybe 100-200 people who care about EQ PvP enough to play and most of us will get bored after the initial launch and stop playing. EQ PvP is functionally dead without bringing in a larger amount of new bodies who just want to play retro EQ and have never played before. I'm confident that once such a single download package exists that it would be trivial to do mass promotion in the right places to create a booming (relative to current population) scene that would support EQ PvP. There has to be a population of players big enough to draw on for PvP not just grizzled veteran nerds waiting to grief the shit out of any new player dumb enough to try fighting us.

This is the long road to saving EQ PvP, not the short road of another low population fast exp custom box. I think EQ emulation is going to die off in about 10 years without an effort like this. We need new players and while some people are promoting P99 using pirated client links and such it isn't going to be sustainable long term.

[Tormmac]

These classic mechanics should be available via the min/max_expansion flags or similar mechanics rather than continuing to splinter efforts. Think of how many people have duplicated the same work on mechanics like this doing research, writing code, and then throwing away their work when they realized they could never finish. Those things like AC armor code formulas should just be in modern EQEmu source and controlled via content flags. Set value to True in database if you want classic AC formulas, etc. Set era to Velious and it just works. I'd also like to enable an sqlite database for EQemu. With this and the era switching data filled in it would allow for a "one click" deployment of a classic EQ server on the desktop. No technical steps required and easy to control via configuration values.

This brings me back to the client which I've mentioned before as the final step to a complete single package that can be distributed and allow playing classic EQ. If that project to recreate the client is successful and is compatible with EQEmu servers then EQ could live on. Another angle is the changing laws with regards to archiving software that has been abandoned. It may be possible in the near future to argue that we can distribute the EQ client legally because that software no longer functions alone and has no server support from the company who sold it. You can't take a Velious disc and start playing you have to buy other expansions or use software not contained on the disc. There is no officially provided Velious server only the community open source server can work with these clients. I think Sony openly admitted they don't have any of the classic source so it is provable that they can't make this software work and it is different than modern EQ and truly abandoned. At a minimum it is likely the client could be retained legally today by registered digital archivists and the public could be granted access restricted to a venue like a museum using a self hosted setup like this. It doesn't take much for the law to change and allow for broader archival access particularly as the aging population is replaced with more tech friendly legislators.

Why does this matter to make a single package that can deploy a server and comes with the client? Because then emulated EQ could be easily promoted via simple install mechanism to a general audience rather than just nostalgic EQ nerds. This would allow the population to hit 10k+ across multiple servers and EQ PvP might actually happen again. It also means that even if the MMO nature of emulated EQ dies with a dwindling population at least you can easily enjoy the content on your own in the future. Currently we are one legal order away from P99, TAKP, etc all being shut down and all of their code erased. With TAKPs release they have almost fully secured the future of classic EQ, it's hugely important from an archive perspective to have this data out there instead of in the hands of a couple people.

Currently I don't think PvP is ever going to happen again even if a new P99 PvP server launches. There are only maybe 100-200 people who care about EQ PvP enough to play and most of us will get bored after the initial launch and stop playing. EQ PvP is functionally dead without bringing in a larger amount of new bodies who just want to play retro EQ and have never played before. I'm confident that once such a single download package exists that it would be trivial to do mass promotion in the right places to create a booming (relative to current population) scene that would support EQ PvP. There has to be a population of players big enough to draw on for PvP not just grizzled veteran nerds waiting to grief the shit out of any new player dumb enough to try fighting us.

This is the long road to saving EQ PvP, not the short road of another low population fast exp custom box. I think EQ emulation is going to die off in about 10 years without an effort like this. We need new players and while some people are promoting P99 using pirated client links and such it isn't going to be sustainable long term.

the entirety of south america would play a free in depth MMORPG like Everquest and they always prefer PVP realms.... the only issue is the installer.... the entire 2nd world will flood to play this if we had the installer and a convenient way to start

[Gustoo]

Yeah normal people are like WTF?> about the install process for this. It's a good way to weed out people but also keeps normal people away which might enjoy the game.

Truth is if you can't figure out how to install it you probably wouldn't like it. Smart people also don't trust the special files from P99 too.

So it has some challenges. Its a special EMU thing it isn't supposed to be mass appeal.

[gangsta]

the entirety of south america would play a free in depth MMORPG like Everquest and they always prefer PVP realms.... the only issue is the installer.... the entire 2nd world will flood to play this if we had the installer and a convenient way to start

Plenty of servers have had 1 click installers since p99

[magnetaress]

Quarm on Github and TakP opensource, Dwarves vs Elves WHEN???

[Rader]

Did this ever become a thing? I would play if it did