Project 1999 & Emulated Everquest Servers: meet Project Quarm

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nyclin: Jun 19, 2001

EVIL Gibson posted:

But on the flip, it's not hard to get the rogue epic which solves the mainhand dmg and haste solution.

The only thing you can improve mainhand dmg is from ToV or .... I think primal??

Tunare dagger is the only other 15 dmg mainhand until they fix the Vulak dagger

Ragebringer is so good that raiding rogues will often swap it in for backstabs

http://wiki.project1999.com/Massive_Heartwood_Thorn

# ? Oct 11, 2018 19:51

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# ? May 10, 2024 19:58

frest: Sep 17, 2004; Well hell. I guess old Tumnus is just a loverman by trade.

EVIL Gibson posted:

How many times do you win(lose) the kfish lottery and get the rodect nife fish manifestation?

So, uh, my first fish kill had a fish on it, and I was definitely 100% paying very close attention to the game and not watching DS9 or anything, so I looted it on the fish killer. (power move)

It took 3 additional fish slayings to get another one, and ol' Rodcet was personally making his displeasure known by the end of it.

# ? Oct 11, 2018 19:57

dromal phrenia: Feb 22, 2004

The fact that this game has a rare spawn of a god�s Avatar as an innocuous fish, which only occurs because you�re killing his innocent lil weak fishies, is so cool to me. I definitely didn�t know it was a thing back in 2000.

# ? Oct 12, 2018 05:25

A Strange Aeon: Mar 26, 2010; You are now a slimy little toad; The Great Twist

dromal phrenia posted:

The fact that this game has a rare spawn of a god’s Avatar as an innocuous fish, which only occurs because you’re killing his innocent lil weak fishies, is so cool to me. I definitely didn’t know it was a thing back in 2000.

Yeah, it's fantastic. Do people do raids on Rodcet Nife ever?

# ? Oct 12, 2018 11:23

khysanth: Jun 10, 2009; Still love you, Homar

A Strange Aeon posted:

Yeah, it's fantastic. Do people do raids on Rodcet Nife ever?

AFAIK he has been killed a few times on live. No special drops or anything.

# ? Oct 12, 2018 20:27

Groovelord Neato: Dec 6, 2014

i kinda wanna play a bard but i must stop myself.

# ? Oct 14, 2018 12:29

Orange DeviI: Nov 9, 2011; by Hand Knit

Groovelord Neato posted:

i kinda wanna play a bard but i must stop myself.

make a leveling pact alt with me

# ? Oct 14, 2018 18:58

KingFisher: Oct 30, 2006; WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.; Fun Shoe

Groovelord Neato posted:

i kinda wanna play a bard but i must stop myself.

Bards are the best, play one!

# ? Oct 14, 2018 20:53

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

I stopped playing my Shaman around level like 26 I think because I hit a wall in finding camps, my only alt is a bard at level 7 and sometimes I think about liquidating the Shaman and sending his twinky gear to Bard for mega-quick grinding. I've got that chainmail that makes regen borderline redundant, some dope spears, and a few other pieces a bard could use

# ? Oct 15, 2018 14:29

frest: Sep 17, 2004; Well hell. I guess old Tumnus is just a loverman by trade.

Frog Act posted:

I stopped playing my Shaman around level like 26 I think because I hit a wall in finding camps, my only alt is a bard at level 7 and sometimes I think about liquidating the Shaman and sending his twinky gear to Bard for mega-quick grinding. I've got that chainmail that makes regen borderline redundant, some dope spears, and a few other pieces a bard could use

I see a lot of Shaman duoing in that range, not so much soloing. Last night there were four bards waiting for a spot in Highkeep, kinda nuts.

I've been asking for a spot on a list in either SolA, Mistmoore, or Highkeep and just soloing in Kunark until a spot opens. I can't imagine how awful it has to be for a non-porting class if you're bound in highkeep or whatever and just stuck, waiting.

frest fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Oct 15, 2018

# ? Oct 15, 2018 15:17

A Strange Aeon: Mar 26, 2010; You are now a slimy little toad; The Great Twist

frest posted:

I see a lot of Shaman duoing in that range, not so much soloing. Last night there were four bards waiting for a spot in Highkeep, kinda nuts.

I've been asking for a spot on a list in either SolA, Mistmoore, or Highkeep and just soloing in Kunark until a spot opens. I can't imagine how awful it has to be for a non-porting class if you're bound in highkeep or whatever and just stuck, waiting.

I mean, there are other places to level than Highkeep, right?

# ? Oct 15, 2018 15:37

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

I was in Highkeep for awhile and I decided to go find another spot and after taking ages travelling I arrived and it was empty, so I said gently caress it and haven't logged in since. I was thinking about the Bard because they can legitimately solo long enough to level decently.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 15:39

frest: Sep 17, 2004; Well hell. I guess old Tumnus is just a loverman by trade.

A Strange Aeon posted:

I mean, there are other places to level than Highkeep, right?

Sure, you have the entire game world at your disposal! Some of the most fun you can have in this game is when a small group does something off the beaten path. If that describes your play experience you're probably not sitting on a list at Highkeep or CoM, though.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 16:05

Ginette Reno: Nov 18, 2006; How Doers get more done; Fun Shoe

I played a Bard for a while on Red and mostly enjoyed it but I don't know if I'd want to do it again. It was so much button spamming that it got old after a while.

Granted when I was just feeling lazy I'd just run one song but if you're not twisting songs you're not helping as much as you could so I tried not to do that.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 16:16

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

I started playing with friends but they mostly sat at one spot in the Lake of Ill Omen killing tigers and skeletons - or, rather, healing and buffing us for like 8 levels of power leveling while they dual boxed a level 60 Druid via a VPN - but they've all quit now so I don't have anyone to group with and tbh I hate spending hours on a list when I could actually be playing

# ? Oct 15, 2018 16:17

frest: Sep 17, 2004; Well hell. I guess old Tumnus is just a loverman by trade.

Highkeep is such a perfect storm. Good ZEM, Goblin Ears sell for a lot, Fine Steel/Bronze/HQ Ore, Bank/Vendors in zone, easy to get really any service you might want because of the traffic/volume of players.

I love questing, and going all over the place for variety, but if I was trying to level like, my warrior or a rogue? I'd pick Mistmoore or Highkeep and just deal with it. Soloing with a warrior was agony, even compared to wizard downtime.

I keep the Giant fort in Frontier Mountains as my bind point now, and just kill a giant every 5 minutes or so while waiting for a spot. Might mix it up, do Brute caves or something.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 16:32

ChairmanMauzer: Dec 30, 2004; It wears a human face.

I know I haven't been on much lately, but gimme a yell if you need me to hop on and tag more officers or anything.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 16:54

hayden.: Sep 11, 2007; here's a goat on a pig or something

I saw a comment on ~~reddit~~ that

1. The P99 owners sell plat online then ban the people who buy it

2. The P99 installer has remote-access malware

Anyone seen anything to substantiate either of these? #1 is sort of believable because gently caress I'd do if it were me. And #2 I can see as an anti-cheating measure, or maybe hoping to catch some dude with $10 million in an unprotected bitcoin wallet (I'd also do that because I'm a dick want $10 million).

# ? Oct 15, 2018 20:13

xZAOx: Sep 6, 2004; PORKCHOP SANDWICHES

At one point the P99 install included an extra DLL that would look at your running programs and titles and such. If it found boxing software or browsers with RMT sites up, it'd notify them.

I don't know if it still does that.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 20:16

khysanth: Jun 10, 2009; Still love you, Homar

hayden. posted:

I saw a comment on ~~reddit~~ that

1. The P99 owners sell plat online then ban the people who buy it

2. The P99 installer has remote-access malware

Anyone seen anything to substantiate either of these? #1 is sort of believable because gently caress I'd do if it were me. And #2 I can see as an anti-cheating measure, or maybe hoping to catch some dude with $10 million in an unprotected bitcoin wallet (I'd also do that because I'm a dick want $10 million).

1. They also sell plat online to make a lot of money. This is the main reason why they crack down hard on RMT -- it cuts into their profits.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 20:23

DisgracelandUSA: Aug 11, 2011; Yeah, I gets down with the homies

hayden. posted:

I saw a comment on ~~reddit~~ that

1. The P99 owners sell plat online then ban the people who buy it

2. The P99 installer has remote-access malware

Anyone seen anything to substantiate either of these? #1 is sort of believable because gently caress I'd do if it were me. And #2 I can see as an anti-cheating measure, or maybe hoping to catch some dude with $10 million in an unprotected bitcoin wallet (I'd also do that because I'm a dick want $10 million).

1 would not surprise me.

I tried to install p99 on my work laptop, but it never worked because the company's custom AV literally noped one of the DLLs right out of existence for reasons unknown to me as a professional computer toucher. Like not even quarantined, but straight up deleted it. So #2 wouldn't surprise me either.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 20:30

ChairmanMauzer: Dec 30, 2004; It wears a human face.

xZAOx posted:

At one point the P99 install included an extra DLL that would look at your running programs and titles and such. If it found boxing software or browsers with RMT sites up, it'd notify them.

I don't know if it still does that.

Hmm, maybe that explains why my antivirus would always flag a specific dll in the P99 files. I just put that specific file on a white list and ignored it thereafter.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 20:58

xZAOx: Sep 6, 2004; PORKCHOP SANDWICHES

https://www.reddit.com/r/project1999/comments/3pcrbi/project_1999_dsetupdll_scans_your_open_programs/

Rogean:

quote:

Let me go ahead and put this to rest for the 100th time. The DLL and Anti-Cheat system will ONLY forward information about a program, it's name, and path, when AND ONLY WHEN it has identified it to be a program that interacts with the Everquest client. Other than that, the program does NOT collect information on your other programs, file paths, web browser tabs, etc. It doesn't even have the capability of taking screenshots/captures. That is false information being spread by people who have obviously been caught doing shady things. Also contrary to the belief on redguides, we do NOT utilize ANY information obtained by the anti cheat system in the process of RMT convictions. We have several methods of linking all types of tranactions server side and can easily follow those trails without needing anything client side. If you have any other questions feel free to PM me here or on the forums, but understand that the details I will give out about our anti cheat system will be limited. Thanks.

Secrets (helped write the thing)

quote:

I'll post what I posted on the p99 forums.

Rogean is telling the truth.

Dump the DLL and reverse it yourself if you're so concerned. I know what it does and I am not concerned.

The only reason fearmongering happened was when I threw a tantrum a few years back - similar to what this ex-Guide is doing - and then I realized it was more important to just be honest and none of this is an issue and I am posting here once again in topics.

Rogean made a post years ago - confronting me on my false accusations - which sums this up:

Quote: What's funny is Secrets continues to claim he knows what the dsetup.dll does and how it works, when he never saw the code for it. People think that he helped me write it.. the only thing he helped with was coming up with the implementation of getting it into the process. As far as what it does.. I can tell you for a fact it does not collect information about processes unless they directly access Everquest memory space.

Redguides is following the same fearmongering steps I did and it appears as though it's working.

You have nothing to worry about.

I haven't played P99 in years, so this stuff is 2 years old. Again, no idea how much of that is still current / relevant. Could still be happening, could have been removed, could be doing worse stuff now.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 21:11

FungiCap: Jul 23, 2007; Let's all just calm down and put on our thinking caps.

If the p99 owners actually were selling plat for profit they would be violating their agreement with Daybreak so if anyone had a chip on their shoulder and actually had proof that this was happening they could get p99 shut down. Since that hasn't happened yet I'm casting doubt on the claim.

That said, I'm not really sure how this operation is getting bankrolled so I guess anything is possible.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 21:50

aparmenideanmonad: Jan 28, 2004; Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!; Fun Shoe

This comes up like once or twice a year, and yeah, it just flags accounts that have SEQ and MQ or whatever else running. The level of intrusiveness that it's running at could probably let them see other processes but the only thing they wrote it to do afaik is to put a "third party software" account flag in the DB when it sees other software messing with EQ. There have been a couple of false positives with it over the years which have led to bans that were eventually retracted, so it's likely that they can see at least some information about which programs are interacting with EQ, but beyond that I don't think they care to know.

Rogean has very probably made money off of EQ emulator and P99 in ways that would not have made SOE/DBG happy, but I can't really blame the guy. If he's actively honeypotting RMTers in the process, that's probably fraud, but it's pretty funny to me.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 00:45

shirunei: Sep 7, 2018; I tried to run away. To take the easy way out. I'll live through the suffering. When I die, I want to feel like I did my best.

Rogean probably makes poo poo all considering his company gets what like 20k in donations a year to run a a bunch of server infrastructure with enterprise level DDoS protection. poo poo ain't cheap.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 01:25

Hexel: Nov 18, 2011

shirunei posted:

Rogean probably makes poo poo all considering his company gets what like 20k in donations a year to run a a bunch of server infrastructure with enterprise level DDoS protection. poo poo ain't cheap.

Does anyone outside of major corporations still run their own servers these days? I thought everyone was on amazon cloud services.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 04:19

Loan Dusty Road: Feb 27, 2007

Hexel posted:

Does anyone outside of major corporations still run their own servers these days? I thought everyone was on amazon cloud services.

Doesn't walmart run their servers on Amazon? lol

# ? Oct 16, 2018 04:27

frest: Sep 17, 2004; Well hell. I guess old Tumnus is just a loverman by trade.

I'll admit it: I don't get it. What is the appeal of RMT for this poo poo.

Back when I played DAOC, I sold people some artifacts when ToA was the new hotness. They didn't want to do the PVE and used the artifacts to RVR. While me personally, I prefer to "play the game as intended," at least I understood that motivation. Same with people wanting to buy loot rights on WoW raids in order to have weapons for PVP or whatever.

What is the motivation to purchase endgame MQs or high-end items for this server? Rush to 60 and have all the best-in-slot... to ... ??

# ? Oct 16, 2018 14:40

xZAOx: Sep 6, 2004; PORKCHOP SANDWICHES

frest posted:

I'll admit it: I don't get it. What is the appeal of RMT for this poo poo.

Back when I played DAOC, I sold people some artifacts when ToA was the new hotness. They didn't want to do the PVE and used the artifacts to RVR. While me personally, I prefer to "play the game as intended," at least I understood that motivation. Same with people wanting to buy loot rights on WoW raids in order to have weapons for PVP or whatever.

What is the motivation to purchase endgame MQs or high-end items for this server? Rush to 60 and have all the best-in-slot... to ... ??

# ? Oct 16, 2018 16:21

Loan Dusty Road: Feb 27, 2007

frest posted:

I'll admit it: I don't get it. What is the appeal of RMT for this poo poo.

Back when I played DAOC, I sold people some artifacts when ToA was the new hotness. They didn't want to do the PVE and used the artifacts to RVR. While me personally, I prefer to "play the game as intended," at least I understood that motivation. Same with people wanting to buy loot rights on WoW raids in order to have weapons for PVP or whatever.

What is the motivation to purchase endgame MQs or high-end items for this server? Rush to 60 and have all the best-in-slot... to ... ??

Your talking about adults mostly in their mid 30s playing 1999 Everquest for hours and hours a week.

Hope that helps.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 17:09

hayden.: Sep 11, 2007; here's a goat on a pig or something

As someone else said, hosting servers for this stuff has to be expensive, but more importantly it's an insane amount of time to manage and develop. It seems like money has to be coming in somehow. My suspicion in the past was that there were really well-off autists that paid under the table for certain stuff, though that's entirely conspiracy theory and I have nothing to substantiate it. If I was unlovable neckbeard with $50 million in the bank I'd probably throw $50k here and there to be a raid guild leader or something.

Also to answer the appeal of RMT: I've paid real money for EQ plat, though I wouldn't say if it was specifically on P99 since I'm fairly positive my character name is on this thread somewhere. I do this because leveling up with good gear as a melee makes it a lot more fun and if I (for example) make $70 an hour at my job it makes a whole lot of loving sense to just pay up a couple hundred dollars and save myself dozens of hours of grinding plat. And I'm not buying high-end items, I'm was just a broke nobody with like 5k plat but wanted more like 40k plat to buy kewl stuff for my low level bard. But again I haven't done that on P99 and I haven't played in years anyway and wouldn't even try anymore given all the protections against it.

hayden. fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Oct 16, 2018

# ? Oct 16, 2018 19:17

Meatgrinder: Jul 11, 2003; Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est

There is only one commodity in any MMO: time. You essentially buy time in the victory lap you're taking of a game you once played: you immediately gain access to items and services that allow you to start wherever you want to start and do whatever you intended to.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 19:22

xZAOx: Sep 6, 2004; PORKCHOP SANDWICHES

I really think you guys are overstating how much it costs to run a P99 server and website(s).

At most, what, a couple thousand connected clients, running software designed with the hardware of 20 years ago in mind? I know the server-side software is newer since it's all reverse-engineered, but still, it only has to handle things as fast as the client requests it, and the emulator software has been around for at least 15 years too.

If Rogean has said "server costs are $X per month" and it's something fancy, then I'm happy to be proven wrong. But I can do a lot with the free monthly credits MS gives me on Azure.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 21:55

Rand Ecliptic: May 23, 2003; Jesus Saves! - And Takes Half Damage!!

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what programming language P99 (and original EQ) use?

# ? Oct 16, 2018 22:14

KingFisher: Oct 30, 2006; WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.; Fun Shoe

Rand Ecliptic posted:

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what programming language P99 (and original EQ) use?

PERL I believe.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 22:33

Rand Ecliptic: May 23, 2003; Jesus Saves! - And Takes Half Damage!!

KingFisher posted:

PERL I believe.

Cool, thanks. I'm getting into programming myself and have been curious about this for a while. I know nothing about PERL except that it seems to be a dying language.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 22:43

Solarin: Nov 15, 2007

I thought it was C++

# ? Oct 16, 2018 22:48

shirunei: Sep 7, 2018; I tried to run away. To take the easy way out. I'll live through the suffering. When I die, I want to feel like I did my best.

C++ with some PERL scripting iirc

It's the DDoS protection that is the real money suck. Way back in the day p99 would get DDoS'd like every day so Rogean had to buy protection on top of running everything.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 23:01

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# ? May 10, 2024 19:58

EVIL Gibson: Mar 23, 2001; Internet of Things is just someone else's computer that people can't help attaching cameras and door locks to!; Switchblade Switcharoo

Rand Ecliptic posted:

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what programming language P99 (and original EQ) use?

P99 uses eqemu so C++ plus Lua for scripting high level stuff

code:


#ifndef EQEMU_LUA_ENTITY_H
#define EQEMU_LUA_ENTITY_H
#ifdef LUA_EQEMU

#include "lua_ptr.h"

class Entity;
class Lua_Client;
class Lua_NPC;
class Lua_Mob;
struct Lua_HateList;
class Lua_Item;
class Lua_ItemInst;

<....>

For original EQ server back in the year 1999, it sounds like they did use C++ but in the worst way possible. The following quote is from one of the devs.

quote:

Ok first off it is not. Removing one single quest can kill the entire game. This is proven over and over when you work with the earliest source code over on [something not to be discussed]. Several times I would change or remove an old quest or even just move or remove the NPC from the zone and the zone would crash or not load properly. You have to go back into the code and fix the borken strings and pointers.

The Original EQ code, as far back as we have it is the penultimate spaggetti code, there are litteraly tens of thousands of lines of orphan code that has been piecemealed and changed over the decade by litteraly hundreds of people, miuch of which has no notations or refrences after the 7th or 8th coder has changed that section over the years.

The original code does not exist, even working with the original floppys I got in August of 1998, we still have been unable to put together a working build for Everquest MArch 16th, 1999. What you see coming out of servers like [something else not to be discussed] and others is the result of hundreds of manhours of hand inputing much of the old game back into the code, a very long and expensive process, that stuff just doesnt exist anymore.

# ? Oct 16, 2018 23:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Project 1999 & Emulated Everquest Servers: meet Project Quarm

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