IRC McQuaid Logs (EQ as originally intended)

[aussenseiter]

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

Good old Aradune! I once made a long and boring post about the origins of Everquest and these answers ring so true. To someone who was familiar with the MUD from which Brad McQuaid largely plagiarized Everquest (though through the lens of a grahical engine), it's very clear that his original vision was even closer to SojournMUD (now known as TorilMUD) than even the release version of Everquest was.

Back in the mid/late-nineties, Sojourn was one of the most popular MUDs on the internet. Aradune was one of the game's most prolific players, and one day, he decided to make a game of his own. One that had graphics. That became Everquest. There was actually quite a lot of consternation in the MUD's community at the time, because it was perceived as a threat to the game. Needless to say, EQ's popularity saw Sojourn/Toril's playerbase decline by about 75% in a handful of years, owing to the objectively superior gameplay experience of a graphical game like Everquest. There was no way for a MUD to compete, even if it was entirely free to play.



Yep. On SojournMUD, this spell required a corpse, and the resulting pet's power would be based on the corpse it was animated from. This was the balancing factor of the spell on the MUD that this game was based upon. A necromancer without a pet couldn't easily kill anything that would make for a powerful reanimation, so it took time to work your way up to a strong undead minion.

When Everquest decided alleviate necromancers from the need for a fresh corpse, and simply let them summon a pet anytime, it led to the class being grotesquely overpowered for the first months of the game. It was subsequently nerfed in various ways, including no longer using the delay of whatever weapons you gave to it, a change that was also spread unto other pet classes.

Before this nerf, you could give your pet fine steel daggers and it would get the same attack speed that a player would have had with speed 19 weapons, but with the damage built into their pet level. Until this was nerfed, pets (not just necromancers, although their general versatility compared to magicians made them far superior) would out-damage melee player classes by 50-100%.

On SojournMUD, there was no concept of 'attack speed' as the game was based on D&D and thus worked in turns, so there were fewer balance concerns associated with giving weapons to your pets. The original developers of Everquest did not initially account for this.



Back then, the notion of paying for expansion packs in a game with a subscription fee was rather controversial. While the MMORPG genre was not invented by Everquest, there had been very few such games until then, mainly Ultima Online and niche games like some weird AoL-only thing called Neverwinter Nights that I know nothing about. By and large, the idea of paying each month to play a game *and* also having to buy expansions was controversial, to say the least.


This is an interesting question for reasons that most might not expect. Throughout the first half of the 90s, it was quite common for MUDs (text-based games that are otherwise quite similar to Everquest) to not save your equipment when you logged out. You would log in, search for items to use, and then try to take on the game's challenges. If you had to log out, or if the game crashed or rebooted, you lost everything you owned.

Then some MUDs invented the concept of a bank vault where you could store things for a price (in in-game gold), and this price was based on the character's level. As such, it became logical to make a level 1 character, a 'mule character', with which to store gear. Then when you had to log out, or when the GMs announced an impending reboot, everyone would scramble to store their best shit on a mule so that they could get it back when needed.

In the mid-90s, data was insanely expensive and many MUDs did not have enough space on their sites (usually hosted by some university somewhere) to save players' equipment upon logout. While SojournMUD was big enough to have made this possible, the fact that it was not the norm is why Brad McQuaid was asked this question.



Well, there you go. Aradune was his main character on Sojourn/Toril, and there was actually quite a controversy when he left the MUD to make a graphical game based upon it. Everquest was very heavily derivative of this MUD, and if both had been commercial products (MUDs were almost always non-profit in those days), Sojourn/Toril would have easily won a plagiarism lawsuit because Everquest copied like 80% of its game mechanics and area concepts wholesale and simply translated them into a graphical engine.



If you're not familiar with MUDs, this question might be more important than you imagine. MUDs were wholly text-based, and the gameworld was a grid of 'rooms' where each could constitute anything from a lavatory to a square mile of forest. A zone like Unrest might have comprised only a dozen rooms: the entrance, the outer courtyard, the main room, the first floor, the upper towers, the basement, etc.

It was notoriously hard to judge space on MUDs because there was no inherent distinction between a closet and a castle's courtyard. That's probably why Brad's answer is so vague. Separating the gameworld into distinctive zones was a relatively new concept; while MUDs had zones on the builder level, there was no actual zoneline or mechanical distinction between one area and the next, nor any load screens or associated borders.

The rest of the questions quoted in OP are from after launch when Everquest had already broken free from its MUD roots, but it very much built itself upon that foundation, and as someone who played Sojourn/Toril before EQ was a thing, it bears saying that a significant portion of EQ was just straight-up stolen from that MUD.

It's only because the DIKU license is strictly non-commercial that there were no legal repercussions; and even then, there was, in fact, an investigation which concluded that while Everquest was derived very heavily from the MUD(s) that it was based upon, the fact that it had a completely different engine and game format meant that it was not liable on any legal basis. But trust me: the original version of EQ is almost wholly plagiarized from Sojourn.

And Sojourn was heavily plagiarized from DIKU.

DIKUMUD / EVERQUEST

After two hectic days, Verant and the DIKU group jointly resolved the DikuMUD / EverQuest infringement rumors on March 17th, 2000.

The DIKU group received a sworn statement from Verant, and the DIKU group thus no longer finds any reason what-so-ever to believe any of the rumors that EverQuest should be based on DikuMUD.

The DIKU group is proud that “the DIKU feeling” has found its way into a game as enjoyable and award-winning as EverQuest.

Give me Rolemaster or give me death(without deeds!)

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Pager-based mmo's were a thing too.

[Ennewi]

Different source altogether but most, if not all, of those IRC conversations can actually be found in the link below. These were some of the other/extended beta answers from McQuaid, as well as Trost...

https://web.archive.org/web/19990209...splace.com/eq/

Brad McQuaid

Q: <EQVBrd> Will the player who makes the deathkill on a monster or opponent get first pick of the loot?
A: <Aradune> Yes.

Q: <EQV-Qs> In many diffrent pages including eq's home page it has been noted how dark elves are great for seeing at night. How much of a diffrence will this make like will their accuracy be better, range or anything? also will they be punished by haveing a weaknees during the day.
A: <Aradune> Dark Elves see the best at night, followed by some of the other races that have infravision. So far in playing the game, having these abilities is very, very handy. As for dark elves being penalized for being in the day outside -- they aren't at this point, but it's something we are keeping in mind if we need to counterbalance them as a race

.

Q: <EQV-Qs> I heard, somewhere down the line, that there was going to be a PvP server. I also heard that you have an overwhelmingly large budget to work on so, will you also be implementing a Role-Playing server or two?

A: <Aradune> No, all servers will be the same. Both +pvp and -pvp players will co-exist, and this is on purpose -- we feel keeping people together so they can talk, interact, trade, etc. is important, regardless of whether they are +pvp or -pvp. As for roleplaying servers, until the world agrees upon what rping exactly means, we really don't think that would be realistic

Q: <Relay_1> [Kenickie- ) Will the world of norrath be round? Also, on a related note, will the time of day be relative to where you are in the world whether it is round or flat?
A: <Aradune> Whether or not the world is flat or round won't be detectable at first, in that we're starting with one hemisphere... so also then is time of day constant.

Q: <Relay_1> [CTidwell ) Can the phase of the moon be determined within the game (assuming there are moon(s))
A: <Aradune> There is indeed a moon -- we are tossing around the idea of having more than one -- as for phases, though, not at this time.

Q: <Relay_2> <Arr> What causes a person to turn int a werewolf, and what happens to the player after the transformation?
A: <Aradune> It's a curse... and I can't go into details, other than to say that when you target a player or NPC while under that curse, instead of revealing its name (as is usual), it says 'meat' [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

<Relay_1> Thanks Everyone for coming out.. I think brad has something to say about beta?
<Aradune> Yep, I have a few announcements about the closed beta, where its at, and such. We decided a while back to have a Phase .5 of sorts, involving approximately 40 people, and this phase has been going on since right after E3. It's going great, and while that phase has been underway, we've been calling people about phase one, and sending out NDAs. We have well over 200 NDAs out now, and will be sending probably 100 or so more out for phase one. The plan is to have, as stated before, about 100 or so people online at any given time. Phase two will begin after we are happy with the way the game is progressing under phase one. With phase two, which will still be under NDA, we will increase the number of people such that we have approx. 500 people playing at any given time.

Q: <BlkStaff> 2) In one of the recent screen shots Aradune seems supped up. His stats are all above 100, his AC is over 200 and all his resistances are above 50, all at 1st level. I know this was probably done for testing but what will a "regular" Human Ranger's stats look like compared to that and will the Sony staff play with "normal" characters in final (at least part of the time)

A: <Aradune> It is true that Aradune's stats were buffed up for testing, however do keep in mind that the scale for AC and attributes and other stats is a bit different than others systems -- some range from 1-200, and others 1-400. Sony staff will play all sorts of characters in-game, and sometimes you will know they are Sony staff, and sometimes you won't. It depends on the role they are playing. If a GM is assuming the role of an avatar of one of the gods to hand out a quest or some such, I would expect that avatar to have some pretty hefty stats.

Q: <Relay1> *FL_Sonik* Alright: will monsters display cowardice .. . will weaker monsters purposely avoid you and/or only attack you in groups?

A: <Aradune> Yes, some monsters will display cowardice and react differently toward groups and individuals, as well as character they perceive to be more or less powerful than they are. It depends upon the intelligence and type of monster.

Q: <Relay1> I was wondering, are some races going to be faster than other races? In UO this was a big problem, someone with low Dex was just as fast as someone with high Dex and I would like the ability for some races to be faster than others. - Ryu

A: <Aradune> It's based on agility, and some races have better agility than others.

Q: Tell us about the new screenshots. Underwater creatures and the new character.

A: Well, those are giant piranahs, and well, they are hungry and would like to eat the poor female wood elf...
A: And the other pic is a halfling exploring the depths of the dungeon of Paw.

Q: Will there be in-game mail?

A: We are planning on in-game mail, but whether it will make it into first release isn't certain at this point.

Q: When can we expect EQ to hit the shelfs?

A: Sometime in the 2nd half of 1998.

Q: The developers of Everquest seem to have a strong MUD background... when did they start playing online multiplayer games like this?

A: Years and years. There's even a guy on the EverQuest team who played the first MUDs back on mainframes in college in the mid 70s!

Q: are there any plans to allow players to take the role of monsters and fight as them?

A: Nothing concrete at this time, but we have tossed those ideas around from time to time.

Q: 2questions. Will there be boat to boat combat? where there will be cannons? or will you have to rely on a mage or archer to shoot at the opther boats? 2. How long vould it take to sail from one continent to the other? could it take an hour? or only like 10 minutes?

A: Yes, there will be ship combat, and as for how long it takes to sail, it all depends on how far you are sailing.

Bill Trost

Q: <Relay2> So, can your character become an NPC character? Obviously he won't as an NPC have my sparkling personality, but it'd be nice I think to go up to my old adventuring buddy and buy a drink off him [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. - Comstar

A: <Btrost> Retiring characters is still an unknown at this point.

Q: <Relay3> two part question bill. will we be able to choose from many types of guildhouses?...like can we have a tavern or a cathedral or a fighters arena built onto the main building? -stump|[JETLAG-] can you burn down a building

A: <Btrost> Ok.. Um I assume you are talking about player owned guildhouses... Yes there will be many types. and since we like having some buildings in EQ you will not be able to burn them... [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Q: <Relay2> [SirRobert ) will there be a system to leave messages for players, that they could retrive when they log on?

A: <Btrost> We hope so. whether it will make it into the 1st release is unknown. There will be bulletin boards in game for this purpose though.

[Haxom]

Enjoyed the read. Thanks for posting.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

"...Retiring characters is still an unknown at this point..."

Who wants to live forever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOhuK7aZayw


Flaw in the fucking gameworld is persistent characters.

My current fave emu solution is, 30 in-game days after you hit max level, the game spawns a Brother Mouzone to track you down.
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[cd288]

Super interesting read, thank you for posting. Wish they had kept the corpse mechanic for Necro pets. Or at least given all mobs a chance to drop bone chips (even if it's a very slight chance for a non-skeleton mob).

Also funny that SOE made them take smoking out of the game. Think about what we're totally fine with exposing kids to in games now? Back in the 90s everyone was trying to keep from integrating tobacco into games that kids might play. Nowadays you can have sex in games, we throw porn ads everywhere online and in public...swearing, smoking, drugs, all fine in video games. Tobacco is like the least of our issues anymore lol.

I know the staff here have made slight references before to the idea of putting some sort of casino into the game. The highpass comment seems to support that would be a classic idea that just never got coded due to time constraints. Wish they would do that!

[Ooloo]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also funny that SOE made them take smoking out of the game. Think about what we're totally fine with exposing kids to in games now?

I mean even in EQ there are still like disemboweled dwarves in torcher chambers and heads on pikes. Ogres look so wacky and bumbling until you see what they do in their free time.

[greatdane]

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

And Sojourn was heavily plagiarized from DIKU.

No it wasn't. DIKU is not a game, it's a codebase. It's like a game engine. You use it as a framework on which to build a MUD. Calling Sojourn a copy of DIKU is like accusing Borderlands of plagiarizing the Unreal Engine. It doesn't even make technical sense.

Every MUD is built on a codebase, just as any video game is built on an engine. There's a number of different MUD codebases, the most popular at the time being DIKU, ROM, Circle, and some others. The DIKU codebase does come with some stock features, but Sojourn/Toril was highly customized and bore no meaningful resemblance to the stock attributes of the DIKU codebase.

Technically, the DIKU codebase does sort of come with a playable game. If you install the stock engine, it has a very primitive framework for classes, spells, skills, and basic areas. Any MUD worth its salt would customize these heavily. There has never been any such thing as a popular MUD that resembled the stock version of its codebase. No such game would ever have become popular in the first place. The stock version of DIKU is about as interesting as Everquest's original offline tutorial, the one where you meet Soandso.

Sojourn was built on the DIKU codebase but plagiarized literally nothing whatsoever from that codebase's stock features. Even if it had, the DIKU license prohibits monetization of any game built upon the engine, so there's no basis for plagiarism. The old EQ vs DIKU controversy stems from the fact that EQ had used a select few text strings (specifically the text shown when you use socials like /grin) from DIKU, which prohibits using any of its properties for commercial ventures. Since so little was used, there was no real case to be made.

Think of it like EQEmu's stock installation. You can set that up and it comes with a playable game, but you can then change everything. Sojourn kept virtually nothing from the original stock installation. No classes, skills, spells, areas, items or anything like that. Every possible aspect of that game was wholly unique, it was just built on the mechanical foundation of the DIKU codebase.

Meanwhile, Everquest stole wholesale from Sojourn and directly copied many of that game's unique concepts. Classes, races, area concepts, quite a few items, etc. Since SojournMUD was a hobby game run by amateurs with a playerbase of a few hundred people, no action was taken. If it had been a commercial game, it would have been a slam-dunk win in a plagiarism case against EQ. Everquest really is pretty much a direct port of Sojourn onto a graphical engine, just scrubbed of names that belong to the Forgotten Realms IP.

[Trexller]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also funny that SOE made them take smoking out of the game. Think about what we're totally fine with exposing kids to in games now? Back in the 90s everyone was trying to keep from integrating tobacco into games that kids might play. Nowadays you can have sex in games, we throw porn ads everywhere online and in public...swearing, smoking, drugs, all fine in video games. Tobacco is like the least of our issues anymore lol.

tobacco is all but banned from games. but nudity, trannies, bestiality, homos of all types, child brides, general pedo shit, its all become the norm.

BUT GOD FORBID YOUR CHILD SEES A CIGARETTE THAT COULD BE BAD FOR THEIR DEVELOPMENTAL HEALTH

[Duik]

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

tobacco is all but banned from games. but nudity, trannies, bestiality, homos of all types, child brides, general pedo shit, its all become the norm.

BUT GOD FORBID YOUR CHILD SEES A CIGARETTE THAT COULD BE BAD FOR THEIR DEVELOPMENTAL HEALTH

What the fuck games are you playing? Umm u can always just stop playing the pedo/tranny/homo games.
Unless you secretly likem? I dunno.