nonsense rumors? really? im pretty sure charm STILL make corpses poof on p99 even still today, just as they did back then. go charm a shaman/necro/druid or anything that can inflict a high damage DoT, have them fight another mob make sure you pet gets DoTs ticking. break the charm before the last few ticks kill the mob. Since you did no damage to it, and all the damage was inflicted by a mob, the corpse will simplt vanish, no different than a guard swatting a bat in a newb yard.

Some things never change....

yes, and all it takes is someone to post about how an asp poofed his orcs corpse and everyone i suddely on the bandwagon.

turns out i gave you multiple reasons, but you only bothered to focus on one, the one which you demostrate how little you know of the subject, both then and now. but yes it was a constellation of factors working against charming in groups, not just one.


the vast majority of peope still used dial up for the first year or so. now you are trying to find a person from a class thats is only 5% of the total server population, where only about 10-15% had cable or better. You see problem here with your "observations"? just like i've never seen a black person play a clarinet, surely black people just don't play clarinets.

Swarm kitting bards? hmm? the masses of quad or more kiting druids and wizards?

We're just going in circles here, so I won't try to refute you point by point, but I had to say something about that last one ...

Have you not heard about the "unclassic" (and yet I would argue more classic) 25 mob AoE limit? It very much did address unclassic Bard behavior, and is a perfect example of doing exactly what I'm talking about.

well, i wasn't around when that happened so i can't speak with any certianty on it but my loose grasp on it suggests it had more to do not just with bards swarming but mass aoe in dungeons, because both things lead to zone disruptions, not etirely because they are unclassic.

Just making sure I understand:

You refer to the case with bards where the mechanic was working as it had worked in classic but which lead to “unclassic” behavior where bards (and aoe groups in Chardok) were monopolizing content / gaining unreasonable exp.

How is this comparable to this issue raised on charm? I thought the argument on which side you stand is that the charm mechanic as it is implemented on p99 is incorrectly implemented?

Sorry, just trying to make sure I understand

Throughout this whole conversation (not just in this thread) I've asserted one thing, that I'm sure of because I played in classic: Enchanters here aren't classic!

What I haven't said is why: I leave that to smarter folks than myself, ie. the classic researchers here like Dolalin (who've suggested something about channeling and/or resists). "But how can you know if it's wrong if you don't know what's wrong?" I hear you ask.

Imagine your buddy made a Street Fighter 2 emulator, and he invites you over to play. Your other buddies are already playing, and you notice whenever anyone plays Ryu, they don't dragon punch. You ask why and everyones says "dragon punch sucks, so we're not using it."

Now, do you need to know the exact number of points of damage the original Ryu dragon punch did in the original code to say something's wrong? Do you need to know any other mechanics, like how hits and misses work? Or can you just say "in the original Street Fighter 2, dragon punching was good, and people used it: therefore, something isn't right about this emulator?"

The rabbit hole rectifying "unclassicness", as a result of people simply playing the game differently in 2022 due to player knowledge/tecnhology improving, is bottomless.

And if you can show me evidence that the Enchanters not playing anything like they did in classic is just a reflection of player knowledge, and not deficiencies in (a very difficult to get right) part of the emulator, I'd agree.

But you can't, and again smarter people than me have shown (with evidence, not just their "feels" like you and I) how factors like channeling in fact aren't classic here.

unfortuntely the onus isn't on me to prove anything, it's on you/others to do so. Even more unfortunately, it will prove an impossibility since no one has the original source code. And for the trifecta of loramin sadness, even if you massivley nerf channeling it will only make enchanters that much more powerful(relatively speaking), as ive mentioned before: color flux.

That's why the people I keep referring to (eg. Dolalin) have posted evidence to the Bug forums.

But that doesn't mean there isn't evidence of how it worked. Also, it's like you're completely ignored my Street Fighter II example: you don't need to know exactly how the original worked to know the emulator isn't emulating it correctly.

We'll have to wait for the fix to see, but here's why I think you're wrong: Enchanters in live were not soloing gods, or charmers in groups, on live during classic! So we have tons of historical evidence that color flux didn't make them so, because (for two years, across tens of servers) it didn't do that.

One more anecdotal comment:

I don't find the mechanics of charm here different enough to detect compared to my memory of live EQ from the start of Velious (started playing either right before or right after the velious expansion) through Gates of Diiscord (I think I quit about the time they nerfed charmed mobs). I did contribute charm parse logs to castersrealm at the time, but can't seem to dig those up now. Not positive my username on castersrealm was the same as this, unfortunately (my Enchanter's name). I thiiiink I started on Luclin server, later switched to Stormhammer (after 60).

I did personally use charm solo and in groups -- but not as much as here. (I started playing with dedicated 6 person friend group, so did about 1-45 with a pretty steady group, before people drifted away).

I *do* think channeling is slightly different -- it seems easier. Not waaaay easier, but easier (PS: wedge yourself in a corner, so hits can't push you). This isn't enchanter specific, of course, but as the int caster most likely to melee mobs (probably?), it might affect us the most.

People at the time (maybe not original release, but certainly by the end of Kunark) knew how to play. No one didn't understand Tash. Xxorn's Enchanter guide should be clear enough proof (as well as evidence that charming was known to be important).

However, two huge things stand out to me as 'not classic': population and gearing.

As others have said, live population was high. I don't remember average player numbers, but I'm guessing at *least* triple. Solo camping was generally looked down on in busy places because people wanted those camps for exp -- and maybe even mobs otherwise used for charm. I too remember Guk/Seb/Etc *packed* with people. The other side of this: people really wanted enchanters for groups, and playing with others (at least for me) is more fun. I'm guessing age also plays in: I'm now 20 years older than I was, and have a family and a kid and a 'grown-up job'. So, hanging about solo now is often the better choice instead of hopping into a multi-hour group.

The other big change: gear. With fewer people, and longer lived servers, people just have better gear here (even on Green) than they did on live. This actually affects melees more than casters -- serious twinks were pretty rare on live, and you basically get handed that level of gear here; this is not 'classic behavior' either. More hp, more ac, more int, all make charming easier than it was on live. (Solo and group charming really started happening in PoP, and I think a big part of that was the increase in gear availability and quality).

And neither of the above are affected by code at all -- the code could be *Exactly* as it was on live, and still result in 'non-classic behavior' due to social changes.