EverQuest in detail.

[Late Bloomer]

Nothing will ever compare to EQ. Not that I haven't had a lot of fun trying to find those feels again in countless other MMO's. EQ will always top my list though.

 

[Cryomancer]

Is interesting how Clerics and Necromancers are completely the opposite not only in lore but also in gameplay. While clerics have spells to heal others, necromancers has spells to STEAL the lifeforce of others. Cleric has lots of great buffs, necros has lots of great debuffs, Clerics are the best group players, necros are the best solo players. Clerics are amazing at destroying undeads, necros are all about creating undeads. In lore, clerics lives to serve the others, necromancers are self centered. Clerics draw their power from a deity and his faith, necros from studding dark secrets from dark deities.

So far, I'm loving a lot this game. Way more depth and RPG than the typical generic gear farming, cooldown managing game.

 

[GhostCow]

Seeing this thread get bumped again is making me want to play some P99, but all of my irl friends are too gay for something as old as EQ. Anyone down to try to start a regular group that can play together a few times a week? I'm available from 6pm-12am central time on weekdays and pretty much whenever on weekends.

 

[somerandomdude]

Never played EQ, but I played Acheron's Call and Anarchy Online. My uncle had guilds in both games and got me into them. That also meant I got a bunch of free OP gear I didn't really have to work for. That experience also taught me that the game was less fun if you got a bunch of stuff simply handed to you, and I eventually got bored. However, these old MMORPGs haven't really aged well, IMHO, there's lots of QOL features that I've been spoiled by that I expect to be in games that make ones without them difficult or impossible for me to enjoy playing without.

 

[GhostCow]

Never played EQ, but I played Acheron's Call and Anarchy Online. My uncle had guilds in both games and got me into them. That also meant I got a bunch of free OP gear I didn't really have to work for. That experience also taught me that the game was less fun if you got a bunch of stuff simply handed to you, and I eventually got bored. However, these old MMORPGs haven't really aged well, IMHO, there's lots of QOL features that I've been spoiled by that I expect to be in games that make ones without them difficult or impossible for me to enjoy playing without.

Those so called QOL features are one of the reasons that modern MMOs suck giant donkey balls though.

 

[somerandomdude]

Never played EQ, but I played Acheron's Call and Anarchy Online. My uncle had guilds in both games and got me into them. That also meant I got a bunch of free OP gear I didn't really have to work for. That experience also taught me that the game was less fun if you got a bunch of stuff simply handed to you, and I eventually got bored. However, these old MMORPGs haven't really aged well, IMHO, there's lots of QOL features that I've been spoiled by that I expect to be in games that make ones without them difficult or impossible for me to enjoy playing without.

Those so called QOL features are one of the reasons that modern MMOs suck giant donkey balls though.

I don't enjoy MMORPGs at all anymore. I haven't have a sub for one in over a decade, and don't even play any of the free ones.

I thought vanilla WoW, and Final Fantasy XI was actually worse than Acheron's Call or Anarchy online on basic QOL features.

 

[Cryomancer]

QOL is not the problem(as longs they are not taking out all "journey" of the game), the problem is the excessive focus on accessibility and homogenization.

I also played a bit of EQ2, is bad? No, is just not as good as EQ1. but you learn spells after leveling up form tin air, no need to copy the spell to the spellbook and search reagents for certain spells, no spell can ever fail and most important. Enemies aren't threatening. I died today in EQ1 after accidentally pulling 3 mobs instead of the normal 1, rooted one and kitted another till my pet died, after it I attempted to take control over the enemy undead and failed. Was a tense moment, you go to battle not knowing if you wiil gonna be unlucky or not, meanwhile in EQ2 I can make a train of 8+ "orange" mobs, throw AOE like Bloodcloud, DoTs in some troublesome enemies and literally ALT TAB the fight and let my pet win the battle...

As for p1999, maybe someday I will check it, now I wanna play retail.

 

[somerandomdude]

In Acheron's Call, and Anarchy Online both, you could get buffs from a mage, and go solo content. There was also good options for traveling from point A to B, like portals and warps, or flying car go vroom. You run into some people in a dungeon, that's when you teamed up, you didn't sit around waiting to form a party. Regardless of who was on, or whether I could find a team or not was irrelevant to my ability to enjoy the game. And I was able to solo in those games without feeling like I was being penalized in some way.

 

[Gregz]

Nothing will ever compare to EQ. Not that I haven't had a lot of fun trying to find those feels again in countless other MMO's. EQ will always top my list though.

"You can't go back", but with MMOs, you really can't go back.

In early EQ nobody knew what they were doing, you generally couldn't solo, and the content was hard. Norrath was a dangerous, unknown, and mysterious world. Surviving it required building relationships and working with other players, and your reputation really mattered. There were also many times when the charity, caprice, or malice of strangers decided your fate.

Now everyone just abuses the meta while watching youtube on another monitor.

 

[Tweed]

EQ came at a time when we were all getting a bit tired of the open-ended systems in UO and the haphazard expansion landmass that was T2A. UO's system was the better way for an actual living world, but sometimes people wanted something more linear. Everquest promised a traditional RPG experience and better yet it had necromancy which the devs at Origin had dangled in front of our faces and then cancelled since it was too hard to implement. Plus, at the time EQ was visually impressive as impossible as that may seem now. A full 3d world vs 2d isometric. Races, classes, all that good stuff. Who wouldn't want something fresh after 2 years of UO?

Those so called QOL features are one of the reasons that modern MMOs suck giant donkey balls though.

Not all QoL features are bad. You wouldn't believe how happy casters were when Verant allowed them to auto-meditate at level 30 and then they just finally abolished the meditate button altogether. Originally you had to open your spell book and click the meditate button which also meant keeping the menu open so you couldn't see anything. Wasn't too surprising to come back to a dead body after some green mob started attacking you for the crime of sitting too close to them.

 

[Cryomancer]

Yep. The problem is that devs are retarded with QoL, for example, in WoW Warlocks had to carry lots of soulshards. Instead of making it stack or even better, different soulshards with different qualities and the soul of an elite high level mobs worthing way more than the soul of a low level mob, they decided to burn to the ground and remove it...

Now, allowing magic users(nec/mag/wiz/enc) to meditate without having to open a book and press a button occupying half of the screen is not a problem.

 

[Alphard]

Is the game free or "freemium" ? i could try it, but i'm in EU

edit: i just got a bit of info. Apparently the game is free but with limitation, and most of the people are on the paid server. I have checked a site for population and it seems of free servers Bristlebane is the most populated, while others are medium or low. I think i'll create a character there, if someone wanna join we can level together. I 'll play mostly on weekends and sometimes on afternoon ( 4pm to 6 pm GMT +2)

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Is the game free or "freemium" ? i could try it, but i'm in EU

edit: i just got a bit of info. Apparently the game is free but with limitation, and most of the people are on the paid server. I have checked a site for population and it seems of free servers Bristlebane is the most populated, while others are medium or low. I think i'll create a character there, if someone wanna join we can level together. I 'll play mostly on weekends and sometimes on afternoon ( 4pm to 6 pm GMT +2)

Project 1999 is free for real, but as its name implies, it's trying to have the game as it existed in 1999 or so. The last expansion is velius, so anything after that doesn't exist in the game.

It does deliver the nostalgia. No stupid gloomy mines for all races to start in, no quest arrows, no maps.

It's pretty active. I see 1000+ people online in busy times, and in slow times at least 300 or so.

 

[Cryomancer]

IS hard to find spells and reagents in P1999? I mean, in retail I can just go to plane of knowledge and buy ludicrous powerful gear + any spell that I wanna.

 

[anvi]

Not really. Each race has their own starting towns and newbie areas and stuff. And each town has all the same gear. But you had to keep on top of things and you had to go back to town every few days for more reagents, food + drink, and sell all your stuff. The bank used to be important too because money had a weight so you had to bank it once it built up.

The research for spells was harder though. High level spells used to require 'words' that would drop randomly all over the world. So you had to either go slaughtering or find someone who hoarded that stuff. It was worth it though, for spells like Ice Comet.

 

[GhostCow]

In classic eq different towns had different spells so you'd have to travel a lot. I don't know how it is now. Also I don't remember using much in the way of reagents. Peridots for clerics, bone chips for necros, and a fire beetle eye for druids is all I really remember. Peridots could be bought at a jeweler. Bone chips had to be farmed

 

[Cryomancer]

Interesting. Researching was mandatory in original? How I research spells?

Other questions, how I can control the elevation while I'm levitating?

I'm really loving this game.

About reagents, some spells like SACRIFICE, require more expensive reagents like Emerald > https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=1768

 

[GhostCow]

Interesting. Researching was mandatory in original? How I research spells?

Other questions, how I can control the elevation while I'm levitating?

I'm really loving this game.

About reagents, some spells like SACRIFICE, require more expensive reagents like Emerald > https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=1768

Researching was mandatory for certain int caster spells and it sucked because the drops were rare and you could fail the research and lose the mats. Working on your research skill was expensive and took forever.

With levitate you can only float down and you can do that by looking down in first person mode. Maybe third too but I always played in first person as the game was meant to be played

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

IS hard to find spells and reagents in P1999? I mean, in retail I can just go to plane of knowledge and buy ludicrous powerful gear + any spell that I wanna.

I mean, early on the spells are available in your hometown mages guild or what have you, but for example, enchanter pets past the first two require you to take a dangerous trip to highpass hold. So at level 8 if you want the next pet (which you do) you have to go on a bit of an adventure.

In my experience reagents are easy to procure, it's just something you have to keep on you and buy every so often. The summoning ones are generally pretty cheap, although I suppose necros have to buy their bone chips from another player or farm skellies themselves. Then again, there are a lot of skeletons that you'll probably be killing anyway...

In p99, you can't easily just go buy some insanely powerful equipment from an NPC, generally you have to buy from other players over in east commons, or kill the monster that holds the item yourself.

 

[Cryomancer]

• Lack of mercs
• Needing to research spells and find rare "reagents" to research which can fail
• World harder to navigate
• Having to visit multiple cities to buy different spells
• Less XP gain per level
• Way harder to find magical "stat stikie" gear
• Losing every peace of gear of death
• (...)

Seems quite interesting, I would play it IF was not a private server. Imagine putting 500 hours only to have your char deleted...

How is the starting city for human necromancers? Suboptimal I know but I play in that combo anyway,

 

[GhostCow]

• Lack of mercs
• Needing to research spells and find rare "reagents" to research which can fail
• World harder to navigate
• Having to visit multiple cities to buy different spells
• Less XP gain per level
• Way harder to find magical "stat stikie" gear
• Losing every peace of gear of death
• (...)

Seems quite interesting, I would play it IF was not a private server. Imagine putting 500 hours only to have your char deleted...

How is the starting city for human necromancers? Suboptimal I know but I play in that combo anyway,

P99 has been going for over 10 years bro. It's not going anywhere. No need to worry about losing your character. Play with me!

Human Necro can start in Freeport or Qeynos I think. Qeynos is better due to the gnoll fang quest, but both are good.

If I'm wrong on that they start in Freeport.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Yeah I don't think you have to worry about losing your character on p99, they've got a long track record. Very active server admin team, they've been assured that they won't be sued or harassed by whoever owns EQ now.

 

[Gregz]

• Lack of mercs
• Needing to research spells and find rare "reagents" to research which can fail
• World harder to navigate
• Having to visit multiple cities to buy different spells
• Less XP gain per level
• Way harder to find magical "stat stikie" gear
• Losing every peace of gear of death
• (...)

Seems quite interesting, I would play it IF was not a private server. Imagine putting 500 hours only to have your char deleted...

How is the starting city for human necromancers? Suboptimal I know but I play in that combo anyway,

P99 is the golden age of EQ, it's great. I have heard that sperglords gatekeep the endgame content, but you may never get that far.

 

[anvi]

P99 is closer to the original EQ than anything else. It's a good place to start. There are lots of other ways to play though, depends what you like. I like multiboxing so I play on ones that allow that.

 

[Cryomancer]

I will stay in retail at least till I get SHADOW as pet. Anyway, learned ignite bones. After casting it, the enemy becomes a skeleton. If I use illusion can I access places where I would be killed on sight by being a necromancer?