Question about maps and spells
 

I am a 'post-Classic' EQ player just getting started. Just curious about a few things.

Spells: I noticed when you go to buy spells there are no descriptions besides the spell name. I see the name, the kind of spell (evocation, etc) the mana cost and casting time, but nothing that tells you what it does. It make sense to me that if you are a brand-new caster on Norrath about to spend some very hard earned coin on a spell, you'd want to know what it does before you buy it. Any one know why they did not include that information?

Maps: A friend who played EQ from day 1 said they had no maps in the beginning because the idea was your character is essentially an explorer, and explorers make their own maps. Since vendors sell so much stuff, I wonder why they didn't include a cartographers shop in the various cities, where you could purchase maps of cities, continents and the world, which you could then edit with a tool.

When EQ first started, was there a pre-prepared EQ website with some basic information on it, which was then added to by players, or did the various websites come into existence as players learned and passed on information on spells, quests, TS recipes, etc?

Just curious. Thanks!

1st off, Welcome to p99.

Both questions you have can be answered here: http://wiki.project1999.com/Main_Page

This is the server wiki, where you can find both details on spells of all casting classes, and zones for each and every zone of Norrath.

Cheers'

Some things are weant to be learned the hard way. Like the time I killed myself with a targeted AOE spell.

Essentially Everquest was founded upon the idea of honest discovery. They did not equip players with a ton of information so indeed, if you did not look up things like spell information or maps outside the game, you had to learn through trial and error how things worked and where things were. Frustrating as it might have been at times, it forced a great deal of player interaction and cooperation which in turn became the foundation of the community as a whole.

The general lack of game knowledge was rather quickly thwarted by websites like Allakhazam, EQAtlas, EQTraders and so forth, but the basic principal of having to discover things for yourself still remained. The game simply was not going to hand you any of this information so even the act of going to these other sites was in a sense forcing players to figure things out for themselves and/or rely upon the community at large.

Obviously games are no longer made this way to which I of course would argue this is one of the primary reasons most games have an extremely limited sense of community within them now, including Everquest itself.

I remember I got killed in Lesser Faydark at level 6-7 on live and spent a couple of hours trying to find my corpse again.

I didn't know other classes could track corpses, or that there was anywhere to find maps, or that you could type /loc before dying to see what coordinates it was roughly at... and when I did finally find it I felt like I'd really achieved something (lol)

Yeah, P199 is pretty much Hard Mode. :eek: But that is the draw here. When you accomplish something, You did it, not the game handing it to you. :cool:

Everyone of us one here were clueless at some point. So Welcome to one of the best servers on the Web for great game play. :)

The spell description is one thing i find retarded, Classic or not...

When i BUY a spell that is obviously mass produced since the merchant have, literally, unlimited of them. I would like to be told what the hell it does...

I can see the logic in it being unknown with a looted spell, and to some degree, a researched one, as it might not be the spell you think you researched.

Just saying =P

other than that, its not all bad when you play in window mode and have the wiki ready ;)

//Dnatabar

Later in the game, much later it did say what it did. But that like they say, that was easy mode. :p

You will learn in the long run like has been said even by you that you go to Wiki to see what to buy and click on it to see what the heck it even does LoL.

Yeah, sorry OP. No in-game description of spells or in-game maps. I use the wiki for just about everything.

Welcome to Norrath :)