[Halladar]

you just might get it.

This is going to be a little long winded, so I hope someone bears with me long enough for me to communicate my points.

Look I started EQ in 2000. I played off and on for a few years, mostly off but the game had a magic pre-POP that I haven't experienced in any other game. As to why I was an intermittent player, the main reason is the time sink the game basically is. It would take a lot more time than I have here to explain the pleasure and the frustration I got from this game. If you are reading this, odds are you played in the beginning, and hopefully understand.

Okay, the game was magic. I think it was despite Verant (and Smedley and McQuaid). My belief is because the game was basically a torilmud with a gui, not the sheer talent of the Verant people. Some of those people did a good job (the art people did wonders considering the tech they had to work with then), but this game was successful despite them, not because of them.

I might add, that there was a court case in the early 2000's between sony and the Torilmud (or was it Dikumud) folks. The claim being that large portions of the database (and world definition I guess) was pirated from the MUD game. Anyway you never heard much of it after sony settled, and you don't see much when you google it, but I've formed my opinion.

Okay, let me state something that is a belief of mine:

Everquest shipped in 1999 without a melee combat system. Obviously mobs hit you, and you hit mobs but it was a very basic thing. I don't think they implemented whatever they had in mind, and it is something that has been bandaided in live over the course of 10 years, but has never been fixed.

In the world of EQ 1999 stats do nothing. (I don't know how it works with EQ Emu) but in the beginning they did squat. Stamina gave you hp's. Int/Wis gave you mana. Charisma gave you a little better price with the vendor and may have helped faction. Strength is important for toting stuff and wearing bronze armor, but it doesn't do squat in combat (max hit damage, and very minimal at that) except for rogues. Agility is important to keep above 75 and the sharp AC drop, other than that it does nothing. Dex helps you learn skills quicker (remember no crits in 1999), and well you are going to max them anyway with all the time you spend levelling.

AC. Geez there was a post in this forum with a link to the soft cap/class thing. That whole thing was ridiculously convoluted. Further evidence to me that Verant didn't know what it was doing when it made this combat system.

Okay, those are all opinions. But like many of you I was around in the old days. A lot of you guys will remember Romidar Trueblade and Ruatha and the parses they and others made trying to figure out the melee system. This system was flawed from the beginning.

Okay this server uses EQ Emu code. A second hand implementation (could very well be better than the code they use on live; that isn't the point though) of a system that was screwed up originally.

You are wondering where I am going to go with this, so I'll spell it out now:

The melee/caster issue imbalance issue has been in EQ since the beginning, and is going to be a big deal here.

Bigger in fact. In my "salad" days in EQ, server populations were usually anywhere from 1500-2000. For the old world. Now you have maybe 300 on this server if you are very lucky?

You've already had threads about caster pets vs. warriors. Already had threads about people rerolling casters. I havent' seen them yet, but I'm sure the solo/useless without a group thing will pop up. The sheer cumbersomeness of playing a melee without gate or bind.

With low population it gets much harder for melee. Looking for someone to give you a bind, heal you, port you around, invis you so you can get somewhere to xp to begin with.

Over the years these kinds of things were addressed in live by the PoK books, souldbinders, item inflation. I guess it kind of works now, especially since there are no true noobies in live anymore.

But you guys don't have these things.

An example of something. Usually pre-kunark most people on the server in the level 40 were trying for a lower guk or Sol B group. A few oddballs with established groups may have gone to Perma or Mistmoore. Even fewer may have done Kedge if they had a really reliable group.

Let's say you are a human warrior with bad vision. You are bound in freeport (although I guess you could have bound in Arena). Your party wipes or you are killed in Lower Guk without a cleric in the group. You then have to run naked through N. Ro, Oasis, S. Ro, Innothule, Upper Guk (maybe the froggies hate you, depends on your frog killing habits), and whatever in L. guk is between your zone in and where you died.

Is it any wonder anyone would play a caster? Or say the group is breaking up. You are deep in L. Guk and you can't gate out. What do you do then?

Look I could go on and on about this stuff. Most people have seen the arguments before.

But that doesn't mean the issue isn't still there. What is covered up in live because you can go to the bazaar and buy gear that level 50's that raided for a year couldn't dream of in original EQ, doesn't change the problem with what you are trying to do here.

Like most people I have some ideas about how things should have been, but they would require some fundamental changes to the system at a basic level. But I think you are going to have to address things now. I mean you can easily see the all caster guild with a couple twink tanks not need any warriors (or paladins or sk's). Usual drill some monks, rogues depending on how their damage plays out...

Anyway not trying to be a downer, but I'm not sure how successful this whole concept is going to be.