Everquest (No Expansions)

[cd288]

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

The game/genre being so new definitely contributed to what made 1999 Everquest special, but also people were actually roleplaying back then, and having no play nice policy added to that element of vitality. Instead of continuing to make the game into a lived-in RPG where people can progress by adventuring around, it was sadly turned into more and more of a streamlined, constricted experience with huge timesinks required to get the "best stuff". The entire genre was ruined because of this.

As things stand with the game these days, Kunark era is best. There's enough content to keep everyone busy, and the game world doesn't become so disconnected as it does in Velious, nor as tainted with overpowered gear and tedious raids. If forced to not stray very far from the in-game coding, an ideal emu server would be Kunark-era with the Velious-era class updates, some faster respawn times and more ways to obtain certain pieces of equipment, more level restrictions on equipment and power-leveling, and some of the raid encounters made more challenging (Innoruuk, Cazic-Thule, etc). Definitely a less restrictive play-nice-policy too. I also think that even for a non-PvP server it would be good and manageable for PvP to be a factor (can flag your character on/off for PvP once a week, gain more exp and some other benefit while it's on; enable PvP in raid areas sometimes; have guild-based PvP tournaments where the winning guild gets a bonus).

All this guy's posts inevitably circle back to "I want to be able to grief people on a PvE server like you could for a very limited period of time when EQ first came out"