[PlsNoBan]

A lot of the "magic" that made classic EQ enjoyable was a combination of dumb luck and "right place right time" being the first real MMORPG of it's kind. Don't get me wrong that's not ALL of it. EQ definitely at it's core is a fun game with a tried and true gameplay loop that keeps people engaged and coming back for more. This project and the fact that there are still basically annual new TLP servers being released for the game is testament to that.

HOWEVER

A whooooooooooooole lot of classic EQ mechanics are absolute piles of janky dog shit. The game wasn't/isn't fun BECAUSE of them. It's fun in SPITE of them. MANY of them were not conscious design decisions by a team of allstar developers that really knew they were making the right call. They were a smattering of "We gotta do it this way cause of xyz technical limitation" and "Let's try this cause there aren't any other games like us that we can imitate so lets just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks". Some of it turned out really good. Some of it not so good and was clearly only done the way it was done because of tech limitations OR lack of foresight about how a particular mechanic would play out long term.

With that said my top 3 complaints/unpopular opinions about P99:

1: Insistence on mimicing classic to an annoying degree with a large variety of changes that did nothing but piss off the majority of the playerbase. There are MANY classic mechanics that basically nobody (except a few weirdo masochists) actually wants and would be better left as a memory while we relive the actual fun parts of the game.

2: Selectively choosing (for god fucking knows what reason?) to make "not classic" changes or refuse to implement classic mechanics in a way that also pisses off the majority of the playerbase. I could go on forever on this one but just a few off top of my head. Enchanter charm is WAY more powerful/consistent here than it was in 1999. Channeling works WAY better here than it did in 1999 allowing casters to be SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful solo than they originally were. Removal of buff timers forcing people to use 3rd party apps to track them. Removing stuff like pet window and UI options on green.etc Don't even get me started on the raid scene and how not classic it is and the powers that be choose (again for reasons nobody seems to know?) to let it continue being the festering pile of poo that it has been practically since blue launched. Gigantic variance windows encouraging extremely unhealthy amounts of "tracking" required to participate. FTE races. People scripting and using bots to cheat said mechanics.etc.etc.etc it's all a mess and why MANY folks refuse to have any part in the endgame of P99 and encourage new players to enjoy 1-60 leveling and stay away from endgame completely for the best enjoyment of the server. It shouldn't (and doesn't have to) be that way.

3: Not doing what was originally promised and merging green/blue at end of green timeline and doing the whole "Recycle Server" thing. Many of P99's biggest problems stem from being too topheavy and the recycle thing was a fantastic idea to combat that problem. People can just roll fresh on the new server every year or couple of years even. We're closing in on what 4 years now of Green? Still no word from staff whatsoever on the plans for the future of that server or the project as a whole? Unless I missed something nothing has officially been said about plans for green or any other servers or the project in general since october of 2019 when Rogean said "At this time, we haven't made a final decision" and the community has been left hanging on all inquiries about it since then as far as I know. Hopefully I'm wrong here and someone can point out something I missed.

4 (bonus): Permabanning someones main account with thousands of hours invested for a first offense that was accidental and did no actual harm to anyone or anything and denying multiple appeal requests. Still salty about this one.