Classic "experience" or classic mechanics, what is it that is actually more important to a classic server?
I personally think charm is way more powerful here than it ever was in '99, but for arguments sake let's say the P99 devs got the mechanics exactly right. The experience of 99% of the people who played in 1999 was that charm was far more unreliable and was only used as a gimmick or a last ditch effort. Even if they are correct, the mechanics as they exist here lead to game play that doesn't match classic. If the "P99 classic" charm mechanics were changed to be far more unreliable, the P99 experience would be much more similar to classic.
The classic mechanics of hybrid exp penalties and standard ZEMs also leads to very unclassic behaviors. In 1999 those things were not known at all, or only known by a tiny fraction of the playerbase. Consequently, people's class choice, whom they would group with, and where they would hunt was not at all affected by those classic mechanics. On P99 those mechanics dominate game play decisions. Ironically, removing those classic mechanics would actually encourage classic game play.
Why doesn't this server allow boxing? Classic mechanics certainly didn't prevent it.
We all know it isn't allowed because allowing it would destroy the classic experience. Imho, it is stupid to allow other classic mechanics to achieve the same effect. I'm here for the game play, not for mechanics that are perfectly true to ones that the world didn't even know existed in 1999.
As an aside, I think charm may not have been possible to this extent in 1999 just because the population wouldn't allow it. Peak time zone populations were 100+ in lguk and 70+ in solb on my server. No one was going to allow an enchanter to solo a camp or lock up mobs to kill when there was a small army of people at the zone line just waiting for their name to come up on a list so they could get some exp. Heck, I remember it was common to have 2 full groups inside Oggok killing guards. No one was going to allow a single necro to solo the whole zone. Lower level zones were not any better either. The world was a crowded place.
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