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Haha. I haven't touched this since last Nov. P99 can SUCK IT! 
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Feb 27, 2020 21:29
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Vargs posted:It's less "killing monsters over and over" and more "actually chatting with other human beings while also killing monsters over and over". Unless you're one of those crazy people who just solo in this game past level 10 or so. I tend to play classes that are great soloers and would gain exp much more quickly by going it alone, but it's very boring and the game wasn't designed for it. The best part of EQ is making friends, convincing them to visit some far-off dungeon that nobody is experienced with, and all dying horribly. In microcosm it really was this. Everquest wasn't a terribly immersive sim (though there were things about the class design and inter-dependency that I really really like, even now years out). What it was for a lot of people was an IRC chatroom where you occasionally bashed goblins to death. The push towards group content, towards long downtimes, towards the inter-dependency was all intentional, because it allowed you to shoot the poo poo with the people around you and generally be social. Being a lonely shutin teenager back in the day, that sort of stuff appealed to me because I hadn't found SA or other online social outlets like discord. There still is some of that now in P99, but I think largely anymore people play with netflix/youtube on in the background and if they aren't fighting, they aren't really paying attention, so that chat aspect isn't as robust as it was back in the day. I've still got in some good conversations in game mind, but it's not the standard anymore. I remember back in the day, your player reputation really did matter at the server level and reached beyond your guild. I had a SIGNIFICANT friends list of people I knew even from outside of the guild. Some were more transactionary in nature (I was a wizard, and people/guilds would reach out to me on occasion for ports to places like Hate/Sky, and vice versa for people who'd make time to come buff/rez if something went wrong) but I had a pretty deep well of people whom I regularly grouped with from outside of my guild too, people who I knew were reliable and friendly. I kind of miss that sort of stuff in modern MMOs, if you get in a group you silently blaze through it as fast as possible and you don't really have reason to ever say anything to people outside your guild.
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Feb 27, 2020 23:14
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If its still just people shooting the poo poo and chilling while killing goblins that sounds great. The mixed messages here implies that either you can join the hardcore P99 server and get dunked on or join the netflix/multibox farm servers and snooze without any of the social stuff. My biggest complaint for MMOs is that they feel lonely. Do yall hang out and shoot the poo poo daily or is this just kinda chilling with strangers from inside the game?
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Feb 28, 2020 05:58
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Sneak Lemming posted:If its still just people shooting the poo poo and chilling while killing goblins that sounds great. The mixed messages here implies that either you can join the hardcore P99 server and get dunked on or join the netflix/multibox farm servers and snooze without any of the social stuff. My biggest complaint for MMOs is that they feel lonely. Do yall hang out and shoot the poo poo daily or is this just kinda chilling with strangers from inside the game? P99 was hyper social for me, I don't know that the netflix thing was directed at the server. I played a Necro up to 60 over the span of about year, about a year back, and it was like going back to the actual year 1999. People were constantly talking, I was making friends everywhere, people were super friendly and helpful, there was a healthy amount of drama and bickering, and that poo poo was like 60% of what kept me hooked. The other 40%, for those considering playing, was the on the edge of your seat FEAR that is replicated in no other MMO, of dying deep in Kaesora while charm killing skeletons as a necromancer alone in my 30s, of soloing Howling Stones and having death be a single resist or unsuspected respawn or bad pull away, of dying halfway around the world lost in some zone without a map or any idea of where the gently caress you are. There is this sense of risk and danger that results in a level of immersion that you don't get in any other MMO. You have to actually be tactical to solo poo poo, to break into spawns. Mana is a finite, precious resource. This isn't WoW where you just mash keys and everything dies. It really is something special.
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Feb 28, 2020 06:30
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I jump back into P1999 every few years and have always ended up making pretty good friends with randos pretty quickly, which I can't say for any other MMO. I haven't really spent much time around goons in this game since there's only a handful and they're very spread out, though I did have a fantastic time in the early pre-kunark goon guild like a decade ago. Then it imploded because the pseudo-guild leader was being a creepy weirdo towards a goonette. Exquisitely classic EQ drama.
Vargs fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 06:55
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Elephunk posted:RIP Al'Kabor (EQMac was exactly as you described) :'( EQmac owned, it was my first Everquest experience and the community was so nice and helpful. I got a shaman to level 40 or so on there over a year and it was really just an all around fantastic experience, even being introduced to it after having played WoW and modern games Though actually the first MMO I really played was EQOA which remains my favorite EQ, and its a shame it doesn’t have as much of a collective nostalgia for people because of its small population even when it was flourishing
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Feb 28, 2020 13:14
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Frog Act posted:EQmac owned, it was my first Everquest experience and the community was so nice and helpful. I got a shaman to level 40 or so on there over a year and it was really just an all around fantastic experience, even being introduced to it after having played WoW and modern games Agreed. That was easily the best time I had in Everquest. All the emus that came out after we’re just people multi boxing and it took a lot of it away.
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Feb 28, 2020 14:04
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Frog Act posted:EQmac owned, it was my first Everquest experience and the community was so nice and helpful. I got a shaman to level 40 or so on there over a year and it was really just an all around fantastic experience, even being introduced to it after having played WoW and modern games EQOA gang. My two friends were the first max levels on Castle Lightwolf (Remedy gnome cleric/forget rogue's name). There was no content because the devs didn't think anybody would reach it first month. Definitely still my favorite MMO experience even though some of it might be related to being a child in awe of the world on such an early edition of MMO console play. Someone's trying to create a private server for it and has been for a few years, seems like it's happen relatively soon.
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Feb 28, 2020 14:15
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I've been following the private server people pretty closely and there's been a few of the sort of weird dramatic blowups that tend to happen with those kinds of projects, where people accuse everyone else involved of not making progress/not having the technical skills/being misleading about what has been accomplished or whatever That being said at least one dude has the world working, you can get into it and loot things, make a character, explore environments, interact with NPCs. If they get it working I would be beyond stoked to play EQOA again, I actually think EQOA specifically is the right medium between old-school EQ PC and contemporary MMOs, making it work on PS2 forced them do some pretty clever things to make the world traversible without serious load times but still making it worth the effort
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Feb 28, 2020 14:35
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I don't know anything about EQOA, does it have any connections lorewise to the main EQ game?
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Feb 28, 2020 15:14
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A Strange Aeon posted:I don't know anything about EQOA, does it have any connections lorewise to the main EQ game? If I remember right, it is set like 500 years before EQ1.
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Feb 28, 2020 15:48
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Frog Act posted:I've been following the private server people pretty closely and there's been a few of the sort of weird dramatic blowups that tend to happen with those kinds of projects, where people accuse everyone else involved of not making progress/not having the technical skills/being misleading about what has been accomplished or whatever I checked some youtube updates dated like 2019 and it looked like it was close. I would definitely give it a genuine attempt to get into should it come to fruition. Here's a good video on the game, depressing as all MMO server shutdowns are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U72Jiy-ikyI
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Feb 29, 2020 04:27
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EQOA owned because it gave us this TV spot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-CHG_To7Ag
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Feb 29, 2020 06:14
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I just wanna drop TAKP in here again as a good server for that EQMac experience. Theres prob 100ish real players on during prime tome, global chat channel, periodic mass group buffs by folks, botting generally disallowed but 2 and 3 boxing allowed. Everyone is super friendly and the raid scene gets along with community agreed upon rotations. I haven't been playing much lately but I'll happily crank out a set of banded for any goons who pop on and see Lorien or Meatza online. Most people are more than happy to give away really decent gear for new players as well. I know the boxing is a gamebreaker for a lot of people but rolling a small group of say there people with 2boxes is a blast. Plus honestly the server pop lends itself to that. My buddies and I are rolling Warrior/Wiz + Clr/Rog + Mnk/Shm and having a good ol time. We hit up Charasis lately and got an adamantite club for the Monk and a erudite mask for the rogue. Feels good man.
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Feb 29, 2020 17:26
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Maybe I was never good enough to fathom how boxing would even work. It's one person controlling two or more characters on different machines they have to go back and forth with? Like, I've always been led to believe there's more to the game than just autoattacking mobs, and even if it's slower in pace than more modern games, aren't there still decisions and cool downs to manage that would be much harder if you had more than one character to manage them for?
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Feb 29, 2020 17:46
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Imagine playing a melee character Now imagine playing one but you have complete healing whenever you dip below half health
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Feb 29, 2020 17:47
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A Strange Aeon posted:Maybe I was never good enough to fathom how boxing would even work. It's one person controlling two or more characters on different machines they have to go back and forth with? Like, I've always been led to believe there's more to the game than just autoattacking mobs, and even if it's slower in pace than more modern games, aren't there still decisions and cool downs to manage that would be much harder if you had more than one character to manage them for? Until pretty late (after ldon?), there isn't much for melees to do. SK, Paladin, Rogue can be a little annoying, but you mostly just play your caster and tab back to the melee to press a button or cast a spell every now and then. E: with the idea being that whatever healer you're using gets better dps/mana with healing or debugging than doing anything else, which leads to lower downtime, etc.
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Feb 29, 2020 18:15
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please knock Mom! posted:Imagine playing a melee character Right. The warrior and wizard both are low "action per minute" classes so it's a pretty easy twobox. Tab to warrior and auto. Tab to wizard and pop a root or a nuke. Or evac. Shaman and monk is a lot harder. Pull, heal, haste, slow, buff, dot .. Three boxes is way too confusing for me and just gets me killed. I think you can safely play two characters at 50-75% of their capability. Three seems to drop that down to 20-40% each. If your only job is to stand up and CH, however..
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Feb 29, 2020 22:58
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cmdrk posted:Right. The warrior and wizard both are low "action per minute" classes so it's a pretty easy twobox. Tab to warrior and auto. Tab to wizard and pop a root or a nuke. Or evac. Yeah, but a shaman and a monk both played at 50% capability doesn't equal one 100% player. It's better than that, far better. All you have to do in this case with the shaman is keeping up buffs and maybe breaking in the spawn if you're camping a room with rootable mobs. EQ1 is a really easy game if you're just camping.
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Mar 1, 2020 02:45
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what's the jack of all trades class and can i play it if im starting out? i have a cleric but sometimes a group needs a tank or more dps instead and i prefer sticking to one charavter in an mmo
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Mar 1, 2020 03:41
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Druid. Everyone should have a druid.
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Mar 1, 2020 03:57
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neat. i play druid in WoW classic too. whats with then being the swiss army knife class? people will want me in a group, right? im not really interested in soloing in mmos anymore. regular groups are all i want. i dont have the time or effort required in me to raid Robo Reagan fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Mar 1, 2020 |
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Mar 1, 2020 03:58
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Druids can sub for multiple classes, albeit not as well: they can heal (worse than a cleric, but serviceable), they can provide buffs and damage shields (worse than a shaman/enchanter and magician, respectively), they can nuke (worse than a magician or wizard), they can deal damage-over-time (worse than a necromancer or shaman), and most importantly they can teleport themselves and, later, their entire group all over the game world. The only other class who can do that is wizard, and that is the one role that druids and wizards are basically equally good at. Also druids get a little bear pet eventually. It's an adorably small bear. That owns (even if the pet actually kind of sucks).
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Mar 1, 2020 04:06
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ive always been fine with the not as good at a specific thing as a more dedicated class. it doesnt matter if my heals or nukes are great if the group is missing someone we need and we're waiting for half an hour to fill the slot. plus i get bored doing one thing
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Mar 1, 2020 04:10
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I haven't played P99 since January, since classes restarted (going back to college as An Old is loving weird and kind of sucks), and I'm... pretty ok with it. I miss dinking around in the game, but unfortunately the classes I really want to play are just kinda poo poo and require a lot of grouping and coordination, not to mention money and gear. Specifically, I really want to play a shadow knight and rogue (and later an iksar monk, once Kunark hits Green). I've just kinda given up on it, since my best bet would have been to level a caster first and get money for twinking the characters I actually want to play, and that's just... I don't care enough to do that. I do miss wandering around in the EQ world. It's such a loving cool and nostalgic place, but ugh.
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Mar 1, 2020 04:15
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If you really want to get in groups in this game I would highly suggest against playing a druid. You're probably better off going shaman.
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Mar 1, 2020 04:19
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I quit playing when they merged the new servers, I went from being able to reliably get a group anywhere to not being able to get a group at all overnight. Is everyone done leveling their twinks?
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Mar 1, 2020 04:23
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Arven posted:I quit playing when they merged the new servers, I went from being able to reliably get a group anywhere to not being able to get a group at all overnight. Is everyone done leveling their twinks? Wouldnt this have meant more new players? Are the early levels a ghost town?
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Mar 1, 2020 08:16
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Sneak Lemming posted:Wouldnt this have meant more new players? Are the early levels a ghost town? My experience before the merge was that there were just enough players that most groups would take anyone and most camps were open. After the merge every camp was taken, and enough people were LFG that groups were trying to be optimal in their makeup. I was playing a rogue, so I found myself suddenly unable to ever get a group.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:35
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I did sort of notice that right after the merge, but the max pop has kind of leveled out and primetime numbers now aren't much different than green by itself was a couple months ago. A lot of people have hit 50 and started alts, so you're seeing a lot of level 10s with rubi bps and things like that now, but I'd say all level ranges are still decently populated. My main is a shaman and if I just throw LFG up I'll get invites for groups in HHK\solb\lower guk in no time. Relayer fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Mar 2, 2020 |
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Mar 2, 2020 00:14
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I started a Bard on green because I want to screw around with kiting while I watch XFL games on the weekend. Somehow I always forget how hard it is to start from scratch in EQ. That stretch between level 3 and 5 is particularly miserable. I’m outside of Ak’Anon with my rusty bastard sword and cloth armor asking what am I doing with my life?
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Mar 2, 2020 12:34
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Vargs posted:If you really want to get in groups in this game I would highly suggest against playing a druid. Druids I feel hang better in groups than a lot of people give them credit for. They don't do any one thing well aside from movement and travelling, but they cover a lot of things well enough that they can make due. They can't heal like a cleric, but they have wide access to regen and can spot heal well enough to cover downtime. They can't nuke like a wizard but they can still put down a goodly amount of hurt. They can't crowd control like a chanter, but roots (when outdoors), snare, and charm animal are still useful in a pinch. They have thorns for when you don't have a mage on hand for damage shields, some basic stat boosts when you don't have a Shaman, and Succor is a great 'oh poo poo' button to have in reserve for when poo poo hits the fan. I think the main problem is that the ways they support the group isn't as hard in the debuffing sense that Chanters/Shamans/Bards are known for (i.e. mez, charm, -resists, slow) nor are their buffs as potent (no haste, which is the premier DPS buff, nor mana regen), but they do bring utility to the group in terms of teleports, tracking, and versatility in purpose from moment to moment. That being said, if you plan on playing in groups and only in groups, I can agree with playing Shaman (or actually, my suggestion of Bard), groups will love you, though as you get higher level as shaman you'll find your effectiveness will be heavily dependant on how well you use cannibalize. Bards in general are pretty rad, they dont really have a lot of gear dependency and you can level them extraordinarily cheap, the only really required purchases as you level up is getting off the stock vendor instruments as quickly as possible, and you can get Mistmoore Battle Drums and a Lute of the Gypsy Princess (basically your two of your three core instruments from level 10-40 or so) for like 50-100 platinum a pop. You get new songs every level, but you can pretty easily critical path it and skip the less useful spells. They aren't terribly stat dependant (dex determines song failure rate and cha determines charm/mez effectiveness and vendor prices, but neither of these make such a huge huge impact if you're not on bleeding edge content) so you can be surprisingly successful in hobo clownsuit gear for most of your career.
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Mar 5, 2020 17:32
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Bards always seemed cool, getting a new 'spell' at each level instead of every 4, but there was always this idea of them requiring a ton of activity and timing to keep multiple songs up that seemed like a big hassle. Is that overstated or is it just not as intimidating as I made it out to be?
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Mar 5, 2020 17:46
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A Strange Aeon posted:Bards always seemed cool, getting a new 'spell' at each level instead of every 4, but there was always this idea of them requiring a ton of activity and timing to keep multiple songs up that seemed like a big hassle. Is that overstated or is it just not as intimidating as I made it out to be? I've been playing a Bard on green (up to 35) for the first time, and this is sort of true. It's fairly unique in that for most classes, it's largely about understanding your toolkit and being able to use it effectively, and there's more or less a ceiling in how effective you can be. Bards are different in that you can pretty much always be clicking more buttons and rolling your face on the keyboard harder in order to squeeze out more effectiveness, but you can still be extremely useful with a relatively small amount of effort. As as example, one of the most useful things you can do for almost every level is keep up your heal regen song, which is twice as effective if you have a lute equipped. If you just want a baseline of effectiveness, you can create two macros that will twist two songs together each, for a total of four songs, and then alternate hitting both while you have your lute equipped. This will already be pretty useful because you have several strong buffs you can keep up at any given time, and you're healing for quite a bit. If you want to be more effective, you can manually twist all your songs so you're re-casting anything you miss a note on, or use whatever's more optimal at any given time. If you want to be more effective, you can also swap to melee weapons in between heal song casts, so you're adding some DPS as well (it's more important to hit the heal song with the lute equipped, but this definitely helps). If you want to be more effective, you can start throwing in more crowd control as appropriate (mezzes, charms for extra dps/crowd control, snares). You can also pull really well with the charms and lulls and snares and stuff. You can also tank in a pinch, using snares/slows to grab aggro. You can also spam mez on casting mobs to interrupt their casts. There's a TON you can do and the more buttons you're willing to smash, the faster you can respond to different situations and pickup whatever slack is needed. What I find interesting about it is that you can be effective doing any number of things, so you fill into groups really well depending on what they're missing, and if you get bored of one role you can pretty effectively slot into another and still be useful. If you're feeling pumped and you wanna go nuts, you can click a thousand buttons and be 5% more effective, or you can be really chill and still very useful. It's great if you have a short attention spam. At level 32 you get a mana song that pumps mana every time it's cast, so you can also be extremely effective by standing near your casters, falling asleep, and pressing one button every 6 seconds. It gives like 10 mana every tick, it's insane.
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Mar 5, 2020 18:21
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bard sounds cool. i like being able to do whatever i want whenever i want in mmos, so a jack of all trades class with a heavier focus on buffs/heals/support that requires as much effort as i want to put in to it sounds like a perfect fit for me. tankings okay but i prefer wack a mole with friendly player bars. and i like doing fucky stuff with macros, my WoW classic druid doesnt have any available macro slots left, so thats a bonus
Robo Reagan fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Mar 5, 2020 |
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Mar 5, 2020 18:53
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Robo Reagan posted:bard sounds cool. i like being able to do whatever i want whenever i want in mmos, so a jack of all trades class with a heavier focus on buffs/heals/support that requires as much effort as i want to put in to it sounds like a perfect fit for me. tankings okay but i prefer wack a mole with friendly player bars. and i like doing fucky stuff with macros, my WoW classic druid doesnt have any available macro slots left, so thats a bonus I played a bard on blue and (like with all of my characters  ) i never got to the 30s but bard gets real fun real fast, twisting songs is great fun, like they said you can fit into pretty much any party and you'll never be short a group even if it has another bard already. there are third party programs that use the logs to overlay spell durations and stuff to make twisting and weapon switching more effective, but imo weapon/instrument switching would be more difficult on green since on blue you can use custom UI (i think duxa?) that lets you set inventory slots/equipment slots as hotkey buttons effectively so you can switch stuff out without having to actually open your inventorythe versatility is great but bard is also great because by the time you're in the early 10s i think you can already pretty much travel anywhere, you have an invis song and can twist it with speed buff and i used this combo to travel back and forth from qeynos to freeport a bunch of times without ever worrying even a little bit about getting squashed by high level mobs tho apparently i lost this bravery because my bard has been trapped in the overthere for like a year after doing some giant killing in warsliks woods 
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Mar 5, 2020 19:07
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It kind of drives me crazy knowing how much more powerful the bard epic makes you, yet be so unobtainable.
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Mar 5, 2020 19:18
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FungiCap posted:It kind of drives me crazy knowing how much more powerful the bard epic makes you, yet be so unobtainable. We just downed our guild first Trak and VS attempts last night, and are hopefully pushing as a guild into VP soon. Raids tuned to 2-4 groups is nice as it's a much more social feel during cozy raids.
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Mar 5, 2020 21:09
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Telltolin posted:I played a bard on blue and (like with all of my characters To be fair bards being "fast / button-mashy" is relative to the speed of Everquests 1 as a whole. Macro all your songs so you stop your previous song before the new one starts and you're still hitting one song every 4 seconds so it's nowhere near as cramp inducing as basically any class in WoW or anything that came after. There's a lot of thought that goes into which 8 songs are on your bar at any given time which I always liked as a tactical consideration, and if you care enough about swapping instruments mid-song for maximum effectiveness (if you're sticking to singing + a single type of instrument or epic-ed up this is less of a concern) that ups the calculus a bit, but typically I don't bother mid-combat unless I'm REALLY tryharding.
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Mar 6, 2020 20:53
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A Strange Aeon posted:Bards always seemed cool, getting a new 'spell' at each level instead of every 4, but there was always this idea of them requiring a ton of activity and timing to keep multiple songs up that seemed like a big hassle. Is that overstated or is it just not as intimidating as I made it out to be? Depends how much effort you want to put into it. When I played a Bard a few years ago on P99 it was a lot of work twisting songs but I could also be lazy and do it less. You're undeniably more effective the more you twist though.
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Mar 7, 2020 02:21
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