What class will you roll first on a fresh server?

[loramin]

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

I haven't really seen the evidence but I've been chalking enchanters up to people just weren't going ape over charisma like today back then and enchanters aren't the only ones effected by modern tech.

First off, the default for everyone is to think "yeah, what P99 is doing is classic", because it's what we've been playing ... but people argued strongly that combat bind wounds was classic! It clearly wasn't, so we should be aware of that bias.

Similarly, it's easy to say "well Enchanters are better here because they know about Charisma", but there's actually tons of evidence that Enchanters knew about Charisma back in the day ... it just wasn't clear how much impact it made. Caster's Realm even did "studies" ... and found them inconclusive (November 2000, emphasis added):

Charisma: This affects amount you will be paid for goods by NPC merchants, and how much they will pay you. It also affects the saving throw on certain Bard and Enchanter spells (charms in particular). There is much debate over the true importance of Charisma for enchanters. It seems that the truly defining element which impacts on charm durations, mesmerise resists and other supposedly "charisma" based spells is actually the targets Magic Resistance. Some people claim that it makes a large difference. Studies run at Casters Realm have been inconclusive, so you may choose to say "better safe than sorry" and add some points at creation.

And there are a lot more references on the various sites in https://wiki.project1999.com/Classic_Research#Enchanter that all make it clear Charisma was known to impact charming ... but again, they often say it's unclear, despite testing ... suggesting that the obvious benefits of Charisma here on P99 might be unclassic.

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

Bards who swarmed were really rare for the first two years since everyone was coming off dialup still gradually.

Not that rare. I literally played in the Velious era with a real life friend, and I watched him (painfully) learn to swarm. And he was hardly the first: he'd read about the technique online from other Bards, doing it much earlier.

You're absolutely right that internet limits, hardware limits, Gina, etc. matter. No question. But that applies to all classes. Whether you take Bards or any other class, they fundamentally play the same here as they did in classic ... maybe with bigger swarms now, but they're still the same Bards (and the staff even "nerfed" swarms to make them more classic!)

Meanwhile, Enchanter is the only class that fundamentally aren't the same as on live. They went from being a primarily group class, that could solo (dangerously, so most didn't) ... to being a primarily solo class. You can't convince me that's classic.