After Velious - discussion thread

[Taxi]

To keep that other thread tight, lets use this one for back and forths and shooting the shit.

Heres a recap of dev input about where they would like to take the server after velious:

Originally Posted by mixxit [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Great suggestions so far guys, keep em coming!

Here's some I loved!:
* New content added should be on the existing continents and not lots of new zones
* Implement planar access in a similiar fashion to Hate, Fear and Sky
* Do not make Velious end game content obsolete
* Create custom AAs and implement them in a different way
* Add more Player-to-Player Orientated content, PVP, Coop etc
* Do not make the game easy
* Do not change our current trading system (East Commonlands)
* Bring back some of the favourite luclin zones (Bring Ssra back to Norrath? Overthere maybe?)
* More dragons
* If races from other expansions are added keep them old world (Kerra Ridge was one idea)
* Never trivialise travel (Pok Books, Nexus etc)
* Playable Monsters - See Project M
* Implement Dirty High Elf Women

Originally Posted by Haynar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If we do anything post-velious, it should be what SOE/VI should have done. Not what they did with Luclin. I am against the going to the moon concept.

I am all for custom content beyond Velious. But that would make the server no longer classic. But after 3 years, we may be ready for something different.

I hate to take something from WOW, but instanced battlegrounds, could help keep people entertained.

Making certain zones temporary hotzones (hotzone = PVP) would be another idea. A lot of work would need done to prevent cheating/hacking if anything PVP is done.

Haynar

Originally Posted by nilbog [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Mixxit just wanted to know people's opinions on what they would like to see post-Velious. This has no bearing on what will happen here.

This is a prekunark-velious server. Nothing has changed about our mission goal :P

Since this is a hypothetical discussion, I will join in.

There is no way I would go forward with Luclin and beyond. (cat people and aliens? really. It went from a fantasy setting to 1990s scifi.) Custom content would be fun though. My idea of a post-velious world would include fewer zones, with more content in them. It would have strong faction relations between centralized cities similar to the way Kael, Thurgadin and Skyshrine operated. NPC humanoids could have family factions, and hidden factions you might know are linked. There would be a lot of npc interactions to promote the sense of zones being alive. There would be fights in the bars, and guards that don't show up to work sometimes.

I would try and make use of player characters abilities and spells. example: Instead of track being used to farm loot, it might be used to safely navigate through hostile invisible creatures you can't see otherwise:P There would be locked doors (rogues). Every class should have some type of use.

Quests would be hard, possibly requiring you to complete different objectives with one faction, then requiring parts from an opposing faction. Quests might even yield different rewards depending on the route you take to reach the end. I believe quest-rewarded items should be more about effects, and less about crazy hp/mana stats. In my post-Velious world, loot would be only marginally better than the best gear obtainable in Velious, but it would be hard to get and very unique.

I am a fan of real time strategy as well. Optional pvp is a good thing. I believe squads of npcs could be utilized for pve and pvp purposes. Mixxit demonstrated this with the Infinity's Edge server quite nicely. Warfare between cities where you could choose your side based on faction work, with the possibility of your city falling into enemy control. City uptime or battles won could yield temporary titles/rule to certain PCs, etc.

The original zones inspire me more than the new ones. I suppose I would try to make each and every npc and monster have a story, and have it mean something. This is what I missed post-Velious on live eq.

[Taxi]

I would not be thrilled with BGs. Although i would take it if there is nothing else, i think its way better to use every zone available than just a couple of BGs. Its more fun, it has alot more diversity and novel places to hide you dont expect, than if you use say, the same 3 maps over and over.

As for making PVP hotzones, that is totally not classic, but how about making people get xp from pvp? Dark age of camelot did it. (*Goes to hide from all the tomatoes thrown.*)

Ill paste my input from original thread for pvp:

PVP:

(totally different experience to lvl up with pvp, so i can see people rerolling, and it takes way longer to lvl so people would be occupied for a long time)

- Guild wars. Either plain ole regular GW, or something like special guild wars where if your guild gets flagged by your guild leader, then your guild is at war with every other guild on the server which is also flagged in the same way.

- Possibly in the form of reds being able to group with blues to lvl, so its not such a pain in the ass to go red.

- Project M (name?) Possibly players being able to control monsters in events, something like an orc raid on Freeport, spider infestation in Erudin. This could also be NPC mobs but just trying to throw ideas out there.

[mixxit]

Just to reiterate that thread is not where we will take the server. It is purely for my own interest :-)

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by mixxit [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Just to reiterate that thread is not where we will take the server. It is purely for my own interest :-)

Well i mean, its not gonna go there for sure, but it could, right? If you like the ideas that are suggested? Or theres already a plan and whatever we discuss is irrelevant?

[eqdruid76]

Originally Posted by Taxi [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Or theres already a plan and whatever we discuss is irrelevant?

I certainly hope so.

[Darian]

Yay for zones added to old continents- warrens, stonebrunt, jaggedpine (loved it), veksar (might have to tone down that one a bit)

boo moon kittehs

Also a thought- I remember scouring the cloth map and finding places that I hadn't explored-- because they weren't implemented. Some of them were added in with later expansions (The Nest, Hills of Shade), but afaik places like the Grand Plateau on Erudin and The Dead Hills on southern Antonica were never fleshed out. Wouldn't be a bad place to start thinking about custom content since technically, those places were part of game lore in 99...

[Malrubius]

Originally Posted by Taxi [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well i mean, its not gonna go there for sure, but it could, right? If you like the ideas that are suggested? Or theres already a plan and whatever we discuss is irrelevant?

Actually the first part of your sentence is correct, as nilbog has already stated. It is not gonna go there for sure. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] That's one of the biggest reasons for this server's success imho - it's nilbog's baby, and he's sticking to his guns like they were glued there. Sony started listening to the daydreaming back in 2001. nilbog clearly won't (other than for fun).

Another quote you could add to your OP if you were so inclined...

Originally Posted by Secrets [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No. The plan is to not lose characters and keep P1999 what it's supposed to be. A classic server.

Classic is up to Velious by community terms. It's when EQ was in its peak. Luclin is not considered classic and will not be included in our server. What happens with a lack of content? Well, there's plenty of other servers in the community that offer higher levels of content, and if you wanted to play them, then you should be playing them instead of playing here. I'd like to see people happy, and if this isn't the type of game you like, then it's not the game you should be playing. To keep playing something you don't like is sadistic in a way.

EDIT - and since this is for fun, I like Ykesha of all things. It was a well conceived, if small, expansion. It connected with the originial Odus, and had some fun content. I didn't like the in-game maps or silly mounts though :/

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by Malrubius [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Actually the first part of your sentence is correct, as nilbog has already stated. It is not gonna go there for sure. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] That's one of the biggest reasons for this server's success imho - it's nilbog's baby, and he's sticking to his guns like they were glued there. Sony started listening to the daydreaming back in 2001. nilbog clearly won't (other than for fun).

Another quote you could add to your OP if you were so inclined...

Then this thread is an exercice in futility XD

Maybe its somewhere in between, they have a plan worked out but if someone suggests something that would be great to play, they could make it?

If its just mental masturbation then i dont see the point. Theres off-topic and R&F for that. Its like OOOOHHH wouldnt THIS be cool? Yea! What about THAT? Oh man, that shit would rock!

Then ---> Lets go back to grinding the same ole zones again, not gonna happen. Its like working yourself up for something that is not going to happen lol.

The point is, if nothing new is added, it ends with velious. Unless you can constantly replenish the amount of noobs to the server like nourishing a whale with Krill, but somehow i doubt its gonna happen.

[Malrubius]

I see your point, but I think that this can still be an interesting discussion for fun.

There are, I guess, two general kinds of views of this. Some players feel the need to continually have new content, new raid encounters, and an ever-expanding world. Others do not feel the need for that in the least. Both are perfectly valid views.

I am not saying that you will not get bored. But at the same time, please don't suggest that I will get bored. If I played hours a day, every day, sure, I eventually would I suppose. But I would on any server in that case.

But I don't play to that extreme anymore. And much of the time I am playing is spent exploring, questing, and socializing.

If you do get bored as you expect, then there are other servers with lots of later content. I'm not saying you should quit here, just play other servers for awhile whenever you get bored with all the classic content. You will get bored there too, and then you will hopefully come back and join us.

I see Project 1999 as the rock that we keep coming back to after visiting, say, the 42nd expansion, Fairies of Fookdark. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] It's a classic Everquest server for the ages.

[eqdruid76]

Originally Posted by Malrubius [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Actually the first part of your sentence is correct, as nilbog has already stated. It is not gonna go there for sure. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] That's one of the biggest reasons for this server's success imho - it's nilbog's baby, and he's sticking to his guns like they were glued there. Sony started listening to the daydreaming back in 2001. nilbog clearly won't (other than for fun).

Another quote you could add to your OP if you were so inclined...

I hope you're right. All this "IWANTNEWCONTENTNOW" nonesense is precisely what destroyed Everquest live. It wouldn't surprise me if these people weren't the very same ones who "vocally" suggested the same damned crap to the Sony devs and were directly responsible for ruining it for everyone else, which is truly what I see here.

I've said this over and over again. There are two kinds of people who are playing on Project 1999. 1). The ones who realize that the entire purpose of the existence of this project is to emulate Everquest as it existed on the live servers from launch to Velious, and 2). The ones who don't. So many people are pushing for non-classic changes that they can already experience on any number of other private servers. I think, in their minds, they believe that the reason EQ live lost its charm was that there wasn't enough new content, new graphics, new game mechanics, etc. They are incorrect. It lost its charm BECAUSE of these things. There are much better modern MMOs on the market than Everquest as it exists on live today. But there is NOTHING better than the original Everquest.

I would have dismissed these threads entirely, had the first one not been started by a dev. I realize he has repeatedly said it was just for his own interest, but longtime vets have heard this before. Once upon a time, Absor, Rytan and a few other live devs would make posts VERY similar to this, and some of the same wild speculation and horrible ideas that players foamed about were actually taken seriously by them (ex. The Bazaar, PoK books, chat channels, AA, to name a few)...horrible ideas that contributed to the decline of the game.

I think....I THINK...that the devs have learned from Sony's mistakes enough to dismiss all these "the grass is always greener" players' ideas to dumb down and simply the game, because I honestly and whole-heartedly believe that the reason that Project 1999 is the most populated server is its mission statement, which is to emulate live as closely as possible up to Velious. To deviate from that would be a very huge mistake, and I think they know it.

Too many companies worry more about new content than about fixing the content they've released. Everquest was notorious for this. Luclin wasn't even finished when it was released. Bad business model.

This server is all about the nostalgia of the look and feel of the game when it was launched. That nostalgia tapers off with the Luclin expansion and beyond for a lot of players. I think the same core group of people playing on this server new will still be playing on it in 4 years' time, if it still exists, because we're here for the nostalgia and the mission statement. Meanwhile, the fringe "kewldood" players who are voicing all of these incredibly stupid ideas will probably have moved on to another server in 2 or 3 months, which is eerily similar to later live expansions; Most of the horrible changes to live were championed by players who abandoned the game soon afterwards.

Again, I truly hope the devs have learned from the mistakes of the past. Players who aren't satisfied now probably still won't be satisfied no matter how many of the changes they suggest are made.