Monsters & Memories - An Old School Indie MMO

[deathusurper]

The June 1st tress test is almost here. Still can't wait to explore.

[magnetaress]

honorary bump this should rly be pinned tho [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[TheIrateTurk]

I played the stress test yesterday.

Differences from P99

My monk had FD at level 1. I hear that Clerics will be able to rez from like level 8 or 9.

There was also an interesting change whereby the vendors will not indiscriminately buy whatever it is you are trying to sell to them (and the ones that do give you worse prices?). So if you want to sell your cracked staff or whatever you have to find the guy who wants to buy it.

They did not have sense heading or /loc in the game. Not sure if either will make it to the final game (perhaps someone who knows more than I do can chime in?) I think some people have said there will be a compass which sounds good. I would feel lost without Loc but at the same time, it is not very immersive to have a game spit out some coordinates at you. And I would probably adapt to it.

Are these changes a a good thing? Maybe!? The best thing a dev can do is make what they believe to be a great game without listening (too much) to the little people. We are mainly imbeciles who don't know what we want. You can't create something good by committee.

It's difficult to know if the departures from EQ that were in the stress test yesterday will pan out or not, and it's also probably incorrect to judge them in a vacuum. We have to remember that there is a whole game being made and balanced, and there is a lot that I (and others) are not privy to.

The challenge here is to create a spiritual successor to EQ and the only way to do this is to consider the things that Blizzard got very right and very wrong with vanilla Wow, replicate what they got right, and try not to repeat the mistakes they made. Wow improved a few things about EQ, but also completely ruined many other things by watering the experience down. They added Blizzard polish to the game so that the combat/ raiding was a lot smoother and was more interesting, but they removed things like exp penalty on death, naked corpse runs, added a minimap, introduced fast travel into the world. The reason EQ feels so good is because the scale of the world is massive.

It's also a good thing that the game is grueling because when you finally complete something it feels like it was worthwhile, as though you have achieved something. There is a half-amiable half-selfish solidarity in the EQ experience. People know what a ballache it is to die three times in a row four zones over, so they will help you. As Yogi Berra said "Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours."

The social aspect of EQ is unparalleled. If you look at what they did with Wow, the levelling is absolutely atrocious because they made it so that you can pretty much solo the game. And the quest system is terrible. It's too much spoon-feeding and handholding. Hemet Nesingwary wants you to collect 10 bear asses. This isn't good game design. Oh you've finished all the quests in Goldshire? Please deliver this barrel of milk to some dude in Westfall so he can tell you to do more mundane gathering quests there, brave adventurer!

As a priest who wanted to play a healer, I spent the first 60 levels playing in shadow spec and wanding things down to kill them on my own.

Compare the levelling experience to EQ where after you hit level 5 or whatever you go to Faydark and start killing Orcs, fighting your way to Crushbone in a group, where you actually play your class. And it's social too.

And because Crushbone is not instanced, you have glorious things like trains and you share the space with other players who may be higher level than you. It's great that you do not run the whole dungeon in one sitting. It's really good that you can sometimes catch a glimpse of Ambassador DVinn or the Emperor himself in the throne room while outside. It's very exciting.

M&M felt like P99 with improvements, even though it was incredibly laggy. Doing big damage during combat felt good/ satisfying. There was an evil looking glowing green wizard tower over off in the distance. So far everything I've seen bodes well.

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is an image someone else posted on the Discord because I was too stupid to take my own screenshot.

I think these devs are trying to create something that most of us who reminisce over MMORPGs from 25 years ago and play p99 will consider authentic and fun to play. I am very grateful for them and will definitely be playing this game when it does eventually come out.

[mokfarg]

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

I played the stress test yesterday.

Differences from P99

My monk had FD at level 1. I hear that Clerics will be able to rez from like level 8 or 9.

There was also an interesting change whereby the vendors will not indiscriminately buy whatever it is you are trying to sell to them (and the ones that do give you worse prices?). So if you want to sell your cracked staff or whatever you have to find the guy who wants to buy it.

They did not have sense heading or /loc in the game. Not sure if either will make it to the final game (perhaps someone who knows more than I do can chime in?) I think some people have said there will be a compass which sounds good. I would feel lost without Loc but at the same time, it is not very immersive to have a game spit out some coordinates at you. And I would probably adapt to it.
........

I think a compass would be the only thing needed. I have always wanted a game to use world drops as a way to obtain maps of zones. I think it would be neat to find a map of a zone, that also may have hidden secrets on them. (Maybe the map also unlocks a place in the zone to spawn a named, hidden treasure, or unlock secret cave.

[Zukan]

Thanks to those who were able to pop on for the stress test. There was lag but we collected a lot of data from it. Hopefully some fun was had!

Also, TheIrateTurk, cool write up! I passed it along to the team.

[TheIrateTurk]

Thanks Zukan

I have interacted with various devs on the discord over the past day or so, so they are probably sick of me and my "insights". I will do a George Costanza and leave on a high note.

[Evia]

This game looks great. Sucks I missed the stress test... looking forward to trying it at some point! At least some people are trying to recreate a game similar in spirit as OG EQ!

[Trexller]

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

This game looks great. Sucks I missed the stress test... looking forward to trying it at some point! At least some people are trying to recreate a game similar in spirit as OG EQ!

Yeah IMO the only way to do it right would have to be a non-profit project.

Even the OG devs couldnt both make a good game, and a profitable game

They made a good game, then screwed it up by trying to appeal to wall street

[Zukan]

Hey just as a heads up:

We will be holding a Stress Test on Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 at 1pm Eastern

• It will run for 4 hours, ending at 5pm Eastern.
• If we run into stability issues, we'll either immediately patch the game or, if absolutely necessary, end the playtest (with the hope of running another in the coming days or weeks after)
• For the beginning part of the Stress Test, only Relle (US-East-1) will be available. For this test only (and possibly other Stress Tests), it will be an EU Region server. (But not the Weekend Test.)
• Early in the test, we may be limiting characters to only the Night Harbor zone, but we will bring other zones online as soon as Stress Test data is collected.
• If/when we hit a specific player count on Relle, we will also open Krivea (US-East-2). This server will also be located in the EU Region for this and possibly further Stress Tests. (But not the Weekend Test.)
  
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• Disclaimer: This is a Technical Stress Test, and some in progress work may not be as polished as in the upcoming weekend Playtest. There is also the possibility of lag and other stability issues.
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I know this is a weird time for most but if you're able to join it'd be cool. We want to test out some changes made based off the Saturday test. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[maxtorps]

I'm totally down for helping with that! I've created an account, downloaded the client and I'm ready to go! This is amazing.