Mages were HORRIBLE at launch
 

My first character ever, made on launch day of EQ, was a human mage. This was the only character I played until I got him to level 24. I leveled fairly quickly but not as fast as the high-elf mage in Fires of Heaven (on Veeshan server) did. He was a few levels higher than me.

This was back in era where GMs had to come to you in person and give you your surname once you reached level 20 and then shout it out to the world, so the whole server can know your surname.

Mages back then sucked.

I read it here by someone else but mage pets had no abilities back then. I can't remember this for sure but I want to say the Earth pet did have a few more hps, so most mages just used Earth pet back then.

The worst thing about mages is there was no way you could get a pet past level 20, as research was not in the game at the time and the vendor who sold pets at these levels, did not sell pet spells. It was a huge thing Verant screwed up on mages to the point where I stopped playing my mage at level 24. Trying to play with the level 20 pet was frustrating.

I proceeded to make a shaman and never looked back.

So, I ask this question, will P99 implement broken mages on launch? I really hope they do as I think this will be true to classic and potentially reduce the number of people planning to make mages to steamroll thru content. Mages during this time period SUCKED. I think P99 should hold true to this. I am not sure on the patch that fixed pets but it had to be at least 2-3 months after launch minimum.

I do not think they are re-living "broken" things or "omitted things" that actually make the game not playable, but I could be wrong. I see no evidence in the patch notes for p99 going back that reseach was not in the game at P99 launch. Remember blue's timeline of events was a 10 year test for Green to figure out how to make each era happen, so they could make green and re-create the original timeline with the same months/years between patches/expansions.

I doubt there will be a "2 months of no research" era. But maybe I am wrong.

Sounds like fake news.

Does it really? Considering how many flaws EQ had. Does it not surprise you that this is true? I literally played a mage from launch until 24. It was so bad I stopped playing him at 24 and never touched him again.

I don't even think rogues had abilities in-game at launch...lots of things Verant missed/screwed up, not thinking people would level so fast.

Most of you probably don't even remember GMs/Guides having to come to you in person when you hit level 20 and give you a surname and shout it out for the whole server to know.

While interesting you need to find some patch notes indicating these things at specific era markers.

This patch note did catch my eye though

October 1999
Turns out Burnout line used to be permanent and decrease pet HP/had lower offensive properties. This definitely would hurt a solo mages Power.

Thank you! I have spent some time trying to find anything from around this time period (June 1999) and have failed...I can't find much EQ anything before 10/99 on the internet.

I know the original EQ stuff is very difficult to find notes on sadly so it’s unlikely we can replicate it.

You first needed an interested fan base to create websites then you could finally get wayback archives of those websites. That didn’t really happen until the early 2000 months. 1999 info is quite rare to come across.

I won’t disagree that it’s likely Mage pets were bad, pet spells post 20 didn’t exist and research didn’t function. But we need evidence to make this reality.

necro pets also used the atk speed of weps you gave them not sure if that is fixed

This is a really dumb request

mages are OP and should be nerfed on launch
thanks