Playing as NPC
 

If I am not mistaken, didn't there used to be a command a GM could do to become an NPC or turn someone else into one? I remember a long time ago I turned my brother into a merchant and could sell things to him, but I cannot seem to find any command that does that now.

You know, now that you mention it, I seem to remember an option to 'play' an NPC as well early on...

I seem to remember leveling up 'a grass snake' to level 8 in eastern commonlands... but I could be mistaken.

Did you try editing your character's race to 41 and see if someone can sell to him? As far as I know, there has never been anything like that. Although I have only been here for about two years, so it might have been a EARLY command that has been taken out. You can change you race to an npc race, but it has to be to one in the zone files.

Fulcrum, what you remember is a very short lived thing that was release in EQ called "Project M", where players could control a random npc in Norrath, and hope and pray that that NPC was in a zone where there were players. Then you could have some awesome fun. I remember good times being an "add" in guktop. Goodtimes, goodtimes. This article has some small amount of information on the old Project M. It wasn't in very long, but it was some of the most fun I had in EQ.

I agree nenelan, when you spawned in the perfect zone, it was great fun.. a shame it was so short-lived.

*snaps fingers* Yep, you are correct! Project M was the name of it... and yea, it was very fun, indeed.

The command is /becomenpc. It's what guides use for their quests that allow them to change their form into an NPC and then attack other players.

Basically, it just changes the color of your name to match an NPC's, adjusts race and the size of the race, preset a damage mod for your level. Whatever class your character was, that's the class the NPC would be. So, in the old days before character copies took place, Guides would create a level 1 PC of the class they wanted to 'become' and be summoned to airplane/cshome. Then a GM would change their level, rename them to an NPC-like name, cast any GM buffs needed on them, summon equipment/loot that the 'NPC' would drop on death and give it to them, grant them spells needed in their spell book, grant any special abilities to any class such as Tracking and Lay on Hands, and the Guide would then need to mem the spells to be cast. It was a very long process that took an inordinate amount of time to get ready to run an event. Eventually, they wisened up and premade all of the characters and just used the GM character copy tool to just copy the premade templates directly to the Guide accounts. Much later, this was all changed to be automated when a Guide signed up for a quest/event.

Anyway, I kinda got off topic. I have no idea if becomenpc works 100% correctly on the emulator, as it did on Live.

By the way, I just used a command a couple weeks ago, that turned me into an npc, but had the title "Trader" on it. I don't remember what the command was, lol. I was trying out a bunch that I was reading. I can't find it now in the gm #help list.

Trader only shows if you have #gm on.

/becomenpc was the command.

I once played that feature. Loved it. Too bad it was removed.

It could be done in such way that only certain people can play, as selected by admin.