How are respawning NPCs explained through lore?

[Rygar]

Originally Posted by jackd104 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

+1. I’ve also long suspected that the designers didn’t actually expect players to camp spawns (“who in their right mind would sit in one place doing nothing for an hour just to kill one mob again? Maybe one crazy guy,..”). And if they DID purposely design the game for camping, I’d say that is the dumbest design direction in all of history. So players would be less likely to see mobs pop in front of them if they were crawling around as the designers intended. Now, we all know that intention failed terribly, thus later advances in EQ and WOW such as instanced dungeons and loot that can drop off any mob. WOW did many things overall to end the camp dynamic.

Yes, in fact original EQ devs did not want camping to be a thing. They hated that FD was used to pull singles to a group as well, intending for FD to be just an escape mechanic (save you from needing a rez).

Brad had envisioned EQ dungeons to be progressive, meaning start at front and work your way through. You can see this was emphasized when kunark hit as there were a lot of dungeons without a zone line out after zoning in (chardok, droga/nurga, the hole, os, hs, VP, etc).

They didn't intend on single pulling either, wanted groups to have to deal with pockets of mobs at a time. It's actually a lot more fun to fight this way.

The hole is a great zone for progressive advancement. Rares pop with any placeholder so no need to stick in one spot, and you can fight to teleporters to get out. It is a massive zone with probably nearly 400 mob spawn points.

[Supaskillz]

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

Yes, in fact original EQ devs did not want camping to be a thing. They hated that FD was used to pull singles to a group as well, intending for FD to be just an escape mechanic (save you from needing a rez).

I guess Brad gave into the mechanic of fd pulling. In the pantheon previews I saw they explicitly asked the monk to fd split

[skarlorn]

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

The hole is a great zone for progressive advancement. Rares pop with any placeholder so no need to stick in one spot, and you can fight to teleporters to get out. It is a massive zone with probably nearly 400 mob spawn points.

definitely. HS is really good about this too.

It's really a pity that they didn't do a better job randomizing the named spawns to encourage crawling. My most fun EQ experiences are all active crawls in dangerous dungeons with muh pals.

[Voland]

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

They didn't intend on single pulling either, wanted groups to have to deal with pockets of mobs at a time. It's actually a lot more fun to fight this way.

If this was their intention, why would they add Pacify and Harmony spells?

[Wfrench1234]

They didn’t intend for players to kill mobs over and over? Then they made killing mobs the only way to get exp, and made the amount of experience needed so large that you had to kill thousands (and thousands) of mobs to hit max level?

I agree, the devs of EQ didn’t expect a lot of he “emergent” behavior we came up with to work around problems. They patched a lot of the behavior that caused problems, but they never patched in the dreaded “anti-camp radius”.

[Wfrench1234]

And also remember, WOW also did a lot of things that sent this genre down the wrong path, which is why we are playing his game 20 years later, and why so many of us are looking forward to Pantheon and hoping desperately for its success.

[rollin5k]

The real question is why dont people in "Earth" respawn? There are many disparities between these alternate dimensions.

[Muggens]

Originally Posted by rollin5k [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The real question is why dont people in "Earth" respawn? There are many disparities between these alternate dimensions.

You might be suprised..

[jackd104]

1. Yes we were meant to kill lots of mobs. I just said I doubt we were meant to sit in one place killing one mob over and over (and if we were - that is dumb)

2. I only said wow designed out the sit in one place and camp dynamic. I didn’t say wow is better than eq.

[Ivory]

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

Open question, I'm genuinely curious if it was ever explained how NPCs keep respawning in the EQ lore.

The same way contradictions in the bible are...."the gods work in mysterious ways".