Verant admitted it was a mistake and corrected it. And yes, in the beta you had evidence that hybrids were more powerful than the classes they were based upon and thus there was the penalty. Of course that changed very, very quickly.

I was shocked the server launched with race/class penalties because they didn't make much sense, and besides staring at the book were probably the most unpopular thing about "classic" EQ.

Remove hybrid pentalty and increase XP rates immensely to 45 imo... pop will go nuts

Show me where they admitted it was a mistake?

There are posts by Brad and company saying they always thought the PvP servers were the most interesting, those can be found I'm sure.

I knew a wide range of play styles on RZ, some casual, some hardcore... some hardcore pvp, some hardcore pve. At no point was any one wishing item loot was removed, and I shook a lot of hands and kissed a lot of babies to move up that guild ladder. Not one complaint.

Now... the blue server on the other hand.. they wish this server never existed, wish EQ PvP never existed.. well fine.


It was in an email to Searyx:
You will not insult that man and what he created btw.

HE WROTE A FUCKING SMILEY FACE TOO, K?

weeeeEEEE are never ever ever, gonna grouuuuup togetherr

Brad and his Vision were fucking lame. Guy lucked into something and had no clue what to do with it. I know some of the people here are retarded and like to praise some of the fucking terrible features of classic EQ as amazing and what not, such as this the Hybrid Penalty, but the vast majority of us recognize them for what they were/are, dumb.

Heartbrand always getting a disapproving head shake but never takes a hint

Brad is the same guy who lied to the playerbase saying things like "paladin epic is in game" when it actually wasn't, "alchemy is working pals" when it wasn't coded yet, etc. etc. Did you guys not see the debacle that was Vanguard? Did everyone here forget about how awful Luclin was? Do people here really forget all the bugs that existed in classic EQ that Brad simply refused to admit? What about the awful imbalances that existed? Remember how druids and shamans couldn't get groups in classic (where there were long lists for every camp so you couldn't just go lol go solo newb cuz everything was camped) because they had no ability to heal end game? It took until velious to finally give them somewhat of a heal for them to be able to help. The aggro issues with rangers / rogues, rangers being fucking useless, monks being gods until Luclin, hybrid EXP penalty, etc., etc. I guess some people think the class imbalance was an amazing feature of classic EQ and love it, but those of us who played back then remember how awful this was and how lolworthy it was to see the 10000+ post threads with everyone agreeing how awful many of these things were and "The Vision" being mentioned over and over again, only to in almost every single instance have The Vision ultimately be over turned by more competent game designers.

Velious wasn't the pinnacle of EQ because Monks were imbalanced gods, it was because of a compelling storyline, different faction options with differing risk v reward, great itemization, immersive quests etc. People here keep confusing the awesome features this game had such as the interdependence classes had upon one another, the social aspect of the game, the immersive qualities, etc., etc., with the annoyances, imbalances, etc, and want to somehow claim these same very broken features that people rightfully moaned and bitched about back in 2000 are somehow amazing classic aspects now. Get real.

People, well most people, aren't here on Project 1999 because they think back with fond memories of that great hybrid exp penalty or the awful classic UI, not having a compass, item links not existing, etc., they come here because the gameplay from Classic - Velious was a shit load of fun, and EverQuest with it's non-instancing, contested raid targets, smallish world where people rely upon one another, important reputations etc., is immersive as fuck.


Edit: Here's a typical post from allakhazam about the effect of hybrid penalties back then:

1) Hybrid classes had the largest penalties of any group. It was rated at about 50-60%(Far above the originally list 25%) and the hybrid penalty also ended up extending to anyone the hybrid was GROUPED with. Once this became common knowledge hybrids couldn't get groups and people stopped playing them till they removed the penalty. They said they had to actually CREATE experience to compensate for the penalty actually meaning you got more experience for a kill to make up for the penalty so as to balance it out to being no penalty(that's about how they explained it at the time).

Sounds kind of similar to how hybrids are treated here.

Ya the thousands of people in classic who rallied against Hybrid Penalties and eventually got it changed and the hundreds here on the forums who keep saying over and over again how dumb they are, are all apparently wrong.

Experience Penalties - Description

I think that it would be appropriate to say that most players are aware that there are different experience requirements for advancement based upon the race and class you choose to play. Ogres, for instance, require more experience to level than Halflings, and Shadowknights require more experience to level than Warriors. As such, an Ogre Shadowknight requires FAR more experience to level than a Halfling Warrior does. What some people have discovered is that when in a group, everyone shares in this penalty. Before getting into our plan, I think that its important to talk about what our goals were regarding experience penalties and the group sharing in that penalty.

When EverQuest player characters were being designed, it was immediately apparent that some races and classes would be more powerful than others given versatility and other factors. Later, it came to light that the concept of being "more powerful" began to break down at the upper levels, given that everyone capped at the same level. We could not let any one race or class be immensely more powerful than another at that final point, as it would essentially put parts of the game off limits to those who chose the less powerful classes. While we did a good job of making races vary in power, but not so much as to be unbalancing, the same could not be said for classes. Still, though classes would be roughly equivalent in regard to the compelling reason to play them through versatility, the experience penalties were kept.

In regards to the sharing of the experience penalty, it was apparent in beta, before the penalty was shared, that those playing characters without an experience penalty leveled faster than those that did. It was obvious that this would occur, but it was to the extreme that a group of friends, all playing together, would become separated to the point that they could no longer group efficiently in the mid to upper-mid levels. So we chose to distribute experience in the group on the basis of the total experience of each member rather than the level, in order to keep groups together.

As such, a level 20 Troll SK, having more experience total than a Human Wizard of the same level, would get more experience from each kill, while the total experience for the kill was unchanged. Essentially, the SK would take part of the Wizard's share were everything distributed equally to begin with.

Experience Penalties - Resolutions

Over the past week the EverQuest team has been considering experience penalties in all their forms. We had many meetings where the issue was hotly debated from both sides. We had to consider not only the effect on the individualplayer, but also the effect of any changes on the game as a whole. Eventually, we nearly unanimously decided the following:


1. Race-based penalties are appropriate. An ogre, for instance, does indeed make a better warrior than a halfling. It is not so little that the faction and size problems make up for it, and not so much that it is really unbalancing at upper levels, but enough that the penalty should apply. Secondly, the penalty is not so severe (compared with class-based penalties) that it would cause groups to break up on the journey from one to sixty due to level differences.

2. Class-based penalties are not appropriate. Classes are roughly equivalent in power throughout the level ranges, and the versatility does not make up for that penalty. In fact, the majority of changes made to classes in the name of balance in the last year were based on the assumption that, at the high end, each class should still be roughly as needed and balanced as any other.

3. Penalties, in any form, should not be shared with the group. Players know that no one class is immensely more powerful/valuable than another, and as such it is not fair to ask them to share a burden. If classes with penalties were really more powerful or valuable than the other classes, then it might be right, but that isn't the case here. Furthermore, sharing of penalties causes people to reject potential group members on the basis of them "sucking" too much experience.

4. We're going to fix it.

5. Class-based experience bonuses (which warriors and rogues get) are also not appropriate, as they cannot be so if penalties are not. However, we've decided to leave this as-is, since the bonus is not so severe as to be unbalancing. Bottom line: we don't feel the bonus is enough to warrant a fix that could be interpreted as a 'nerf'.




So, how can you tell me that even though ultimately they realized EXP Class Penalties were dumb and therefore needed to be fixed, that nonetheless it was a great feature originally and should be in place here? (BTW it took months and months of people pointing this out to the stubborn Verant crew as they kept responding The Vision, The Vision, before they finally realized they fucked up) This is what irks me the most about things here. Many items were nerfed or what not retroactively because they were over powered, they shouldn't have exited in their original form, but yet we allow them to exist here for X amount of time supposedly roughly equivalent to the duration of live but almost always far longer due to infrequent patches. But, if the original item as it was implemented was over powered, it should NEVER be in, it was a mistake. Does it matter it took X amount of months for Verant to realize this? We don't do this for things like Alchemy and not put it into the game, we don't keep in all the broken quests that were broken until their fix date or what not, so why do we do it there? There just seems to be no rhyme or reason here to things like this. A perfect example is an item like the T-Staff. Eventually they realized, wow, we really fucked up with this item it's incredibly OP and needs to be changed, but because they didn't finally have this revelation until Luclin it will never happen here? I dunno man, that doesn't make too much sense to me. If the reasoning is, hey bro it's classic, then it's time to intentionally leave bugged encounters and quests in their original bugged form as well for X months of duration so that literally every aspect of this server mirrors the way it was on live for the exact same duration of time.