Quote:
Originally Posted by stormlord
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Ok i'm putting the nostalgia (about the client) to rest. Some things in eq's history should stay dead.
I've actually worked on client code in an open source project. I worked on the client interface. I have to admit here that the old eq UI was just primitive, based on my experience. It was inflexible. It honestly looks like an alpha or early beta UI, the time period in which you're just trying to get the basics working in code and on screen. Mature GUI's allow for custom setups and have lots of transparency effects. People mistake its primitive state as some kind of benefit or choice. It wasn't optional - it was the early development phase.
Having the spellbook block your view when you med is not the same thing. That's a game-play choice. Personally, I don't see the reasoning for it. It seems kind of random to me. No point to it. I mean, I could see the reasoning if the player was actually doing something useful in the spell book that helped the group function. Casters, more so than melees, are medding in groups. A pause in the action made worse by the fact that there's no visual stimuli to feed interest levels. Casters that're medding are more effectively used if they can see the group as they med so that they can develop better strategies and see where the group is going wrong. A different spell system could have used the spellbook more actively, even during combat, so that when they med there'd be things to do in it. Reasoning was absent. I wouldn't even say flawed.
That's what I think of the old client. Just a bunch of ballyhoo. Truth is it was a client in its formative stage.
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From a RPG aspect, I fully understand what they were aiming for: Arcane magic users had to consult their books each day to rememorize spells and divine casters had to pray to their deities to regain their spells. Since the game had a mana bar; memorization wasn't of the focal importance, regeneration of mana was. To tie the two together, they imposed the book that simulated studying or praying to regain what had been spent. The UI was intentional & it was a good idea.