Unsolved quests: a can of worms, but maybe not?
 

There used to be a rumor — and I remember seeing it echoed in an interview long ago — that some of the quests in original EQ were never solved. Some may have never been discovered. First off I should say that I find that really difficult to believe. Hardcore EQ players can be accused of a lot of things, but leaving stones unturned is not one of them. Considering just about every inch of every zone (through at least GoD, I stopped playing after that) was mapped for EQ Atlas, it's almost impossible to think that hundreds of thousands of players all managed to miss a certain quest/hint/solution.

That said, let's say it's true. Obviously EQEmu wouldn't have those missing pieces since you can't emulate something that you don't know exists — and if you have the original bona fide DB somehow, then you likely DO know it exists and it's therefore no longer an unsolved quest!

Here comes the "can of worms" part. If the P99 Devs decided to be creative and inject a custom quest here and there, would that upset the player base? Would it be acceptable given the possibility that some content was never unearthed in classic? My take: I consider myself about an 80% purist when it comes to preserving classic, but even I don't have any objection to this idea. I think it'd be an extra incentive to keep exploring old stomping grounds, for who knows, I might come across an undiscovered goodie at some point.

Your thoughts please. And yes, I'm ready for the abrupt "No, STFU noob" responses. Let 'em rip.

So far the p99 devs have taken EQ to the next level by making NPC bards and boats work, which the live devs never could manage. I'd be all for it, and think it would be interesting.

Just my opinion

I feel custom content is part of the EQ experience, afterall, GM's did host these events regularly when EQ was first released.

As long as the events are fun, balanced, and reasonable then I have no problem with it.

This would apply to quests as well :D

...?

Alright, good stuff. I was going to ask the follow-up question of whether you're okay with those custom quests resulting in custom items (bringing in the whole itemization topic), but if you support custom GM events that's probably a resounding "yes".

This mysterious interview gets thrown around a lot. Supposedly there are hundreds of unknown or unsolved quests and thousands of unknown items. Considering how datamining has been used to discover stuff in expansions on live I am wearing my skeptical hat.

We used datamining at the Safehouse to crack the rogue epic 1.5 and 2.0 so I don't really believe there is a lot of unknown or unsolved shit in the game. If there were I'd definitely be interested in some clues to get some balls rolling provided some devs know of said clues.

There is a lot of broken shit though. Cracktusk's 2 slot box for example and the book quest involving the Oracle dude in OOT.

That would be pretty awesome. I already go around hailing NPCs trying to find something to work for.

I have also seen a player do a short quest event in Gfay, so it doesn't have to be limited to GMs or what the developers write.

There were 50+ page threads on Everlore about dozens of broken quests back in the day. I remember spending hours just reading about all the speculation about how to complete the "blued two handed hammer" quest. Everyone thought they were missing something obvious. Turns out, the quest was simply broken. It was eventually fixed a few years later, but IMO, not the way the original developers had intended.

The devs here may be more willing than the eq devs were, but getting items created for gm events was considered a big deal and done so few times throughout the history of eq you could count them on both hands.

I was the Quest & Event Coordinator for Xev Server back in '03. I ran nearly every GM event in the pool at some point. The standard GM event reward was a blue diamond, or if several were called for, the other "Upper Echelon" gems.

Edit... I actually think I still have the old scripts for the old GM Events on a backup somewhere. All the devs would need to do is generate the Quest characters to copy for the events.

Course those were all just thought up by guides anyway, and the only limitation in creating new ones is your imagination, and the OPCodes.

There was a quest text in the Necro guild in Neriak called The Scroll of G'han, where a necromancer GM would tell you about a legendary ritual which, if invoked fully, would allow you to speak directly to Innoruuk. He mentioned that half of it had been stolen by a fier`dal rogue and taken to Felwithe to ensure the tier`dal could never fully invoke the power of their god. I used to love roleplay in EverQuest, and to my character, a self-proclaimed Priest of Innoruuk, the ability to commune directly with God was worth any price.

I spent a month trying to find it.

I killed every single NPC in Felwithe, either solo or with some friends.

I spent days in Neriak, searching for a lead.

I never found it.

Many years later a dev told the community that the quest was never finished, and that it was only left behind as a kind of Roleplay flavor text.

....so it goes.