knowom:

note 2, i like your signature, I agree with leetsauce, we are all on teh same team.

on that note:

if anyone really wants to know how i did something, i can and will share. and i have shared in the past already. im surprised nobody has asked me about the well endowed halfling in the guild hall. seriously nobody has asked me about it!

i apologize about the lack of website, i will decide something today and just turn it on and update my sig etc. ive been insanely swamped IRL for the past year and half

oh to answer the rest of your question

tier 1 to 3 is "vanilla eq", you save the world by tier 3, then tier 4-6 is kind of like trials of ascension for the heroes who saved the world. Tier 6 i have received alot of positive feedback.

nobody expects tier 6

haha.

I liked the Powergamer one better. That's where I got a lot of inspiration. If you were to toss that server up today, I'd shut mine down just to start playing on it again...

Perhaps if he continues development he could merge some of those idea's together for something even better than both. Truth be told expanding upon ideas in new, different, and better ways is the best development methodology look at the wheel's progression path it's nearly unfuckwitable outside of rocket science which is rather difficult, volatile, and not nearly as accessible to everyone.

BTW is this solo/box/bot what's the situation like I didn't see any info on that, but kind of a make or break scenario for a lot of players and server types there are differing opinions on those subject matters they all kind of have vary degree's of yay and nay aspects.

alakamin is merc and bot friendly. you can solo all the way to whatever with just 1 toon. you will need a merc and or bots though.

jhust be warned that mercs are unkilable, they will do weird stuff when they die. i'm trying to figure it out. its probably because the code is 11 months old. merging is going to be a pain since i have so much custom code, not just scripts. i did bad (good?) stuff with the server code a few years ago and was always struggling to keep it current.

Leetsauce. alakamin is loosely based off of the powergamer server. the problem with the power gamer server is that it was essentially just vanilla eq up to the end of PoP and then nothing after that. so it was fun then poof. alakamin is really power gamer 2.0. i took the pricing algorithm, and just created my own dungeon crawling progression after PoP ends (pop is tier 7 to 12 i think) all the way to the end of crystallos where tier 30 ends. I do have plans that will encompass everything up to the end of RoF, i just need to finish placing the bosses and re run my ability/loot algorithm so they have goodies and unleash it.

if only i didn't have to earn money to pay for a mortgage and car and family and food and etc i could work on this all day haha. ahh real life you are a harsh mistress.

ok it isn't pretty but alakamin.com is up

ill take offers to clean up teh garbage website if anyone wants to

im just fixing up teh DB related links and then it will be ready to roll. this includes the magelo and forums

ok everything is working on the website now. its garbage but it works :)

Leveled a monk to 30 here tonight - pretty decent, the one noob not knowing his ass from his elbow aside. Seems the progession kinda sucks though. I've done old-world levelling so much and being locked out of crystal caverns until I'm WAY past the level point of caring is a real buzzkill. Grinding through guk/soldung is so tired and played out. If I have to grind, let me grind is a zone that isn't the same old played-out p99 junk. Can only do oasis-mistmoore-guktop-gukbottom-solB so much.

Rant aside, I'm pretty sure the game gets split wide open at later levels, but after being on Roxxor's/Zarn/Leet/Last World/Akka's, old world prog is a real downer in the early levels.

Happy Edit - Bots (zone crashes aside) and Merc are a VERY welcome addition. Makes it not so mind-numbing. Again, I sound harsh here, and I'm pretty damned sure it'll be a blast later on. Pushing through is real grindy though.

Trying to give a bot a secondary-only weapon before being a dual-wield level crashes the zone, and I just crashed the zone again for no good reason - so tread lightly.

Most of those zones wouldn't be so bad if they simply changed the mobs around a lot from what they normally are and tweak some spawn locations pulls/splits themselves differently. I get what you mean though with p99 being a bit played out the whole thing is a bit static really. Comes a point where you need some more different and unexpected that adds new excitement and suspense. That's the one thing I liked and miss about UO it was such a player driven experience always sort of felt different every time you logged in to play.

one thing that hasnt been experienced by you yet, because i havent been using static zoens recently.. is the zombie mode.

right now when you die, your body will animate as an exact copy of you at your level etc. it can be quite nasty. I've just been profiling the behaviour of my server in the last while to figure out which zones etc to make static as it now runs in a vm isntead of a physical box. when i was runnign it on a physical box. i received alot of "wtf zombies!" messages.

regarding zone crashing on equipping bots and other bugs.. lets play those by ear.. i am going to try and upgrade the server code to current code base sometime very soon. if i succeed then its balls to the wall on fixing bugs

regarding the vanilla feel. yes that is the intention. its a little pretend "oh you have saved the world!" fun and games, then things start unlocking and getting a little nuts. my intention was not to spend alot of time messing with vanilla eq. everyone knows vanilla eq, so let them have that taste then everything starts becoming closer to 100% custom as the game takes a twist into dungeon crawling ridiculousness

the progression is like this
vanilla, kunark, velious = 5% custom
luclin = 5% custom
LDON = 100% custom
something after LDON = 100% custom
PoP = 20 % custom
everything after PoP = 100% custom
also.. i have something in store for the endgame .I'm calling it "newgame+"

As far as early progression, the xp and kill rate is very fast. It isn't a huge time sink grind to level old world, you can just pick up a merc and go. I seem to remember 1-60 being maybe 5-6 hours max time.

At 60 is when the progression starts, really NTOV and VP are the first parts where you can't just mash the attack button and win, makes you work on building your bot composition, learning to control your bots, and starts preparing you for the coming tiers.

Also in the guildhall check the upper tiers to check out the custom tasks, that might help make it a bit more enjoyable for you.

I do really enjoy this server, and it's great to see people back on it. I like the way that AA (and platinum) is used as a currency for many things, leveling, super buffs, class changes etc.

1-60 in 5-6 seems fast, but suppose that depends on if it's a twink perhaps and being PL'd still seems quite quick, but seeing as the whole leveling experience has been done to death I can see why it would be sped up a lot on just about any server.

glad to hear you are enjoying it.

little note about class changes:
passive AA stack between classes. its quite magical actually.

by the way i have successfully merged + compiled my code, it seems my build configuration from two years ago was still good and merging was a breeze.

next steps ->
1. update sql (like 200 updates since last compile)
2. test it (after midnight tonight likely) and roll it back if it fails :(