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Originally Posted by ArChron
Working boats/ships would make all the PoK books go poof on my home server...
Not that the peeps at home would like it, but they have to learn what it was like "before"... They moan and groan about how long it takes to get places even using PoK books while I laugh and say "If you only knew... when was the last time you had a corpse run that really meant running? You're all a bunch of PoK-gatin mammas'boys"... That really gets 'em steamed...
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Lol, but really, this was all part of the game - these things were what made EQ. Even a trip from Gfay to Freeport was a major move, not to mention, you risked loosing your stuff if you couldn't get your corpse back. This put exitement, adventure into the game. And it was a true challenge.
All this work I've done; all the days/weeks I spent building LoY zones - took me days just to research/setup legendary characters like Bilge Farfathom and Quillmane. For what? It doesn't really matter anymore - these classic zones, are just sitting there, no use for them anymore, no one is interested. This is because the ability to level up to 65+ , ubber zones with common drops that contain unheard-of stats. Who wants to waste time doing the ogre head quests in Butcher? Who wants to quest the Raincaller bow or camp the Pearl Kedge Totem? It's pointless to do this with eras like PoP available. Stuff like PoP , is a whole new game, intended to make what you have obsolete so you'll buy it. A lot of people here appreciate what I did, but they are not the players, they are ones who start the servers - I wanted the players too, I wanted them to experience what I did, when I played live.
Some eras are not too bad; Kunark, Velious, LoY, etc - they can still keep the older zones with some value. What really hurts, is when you raise the characer-level cap and add higher-level zones.
What to do?
I already started; I'm working on a "classic" database. Blocked access to all zones but the classic zones , removed all PoK books, looking into things like bring the level cap to at most, 60. Slow down exp ratios, make plat scarce. But this is just a start - other things need to happen, these zones need to be challenging - all or most the quests need to be in place, and working, factions as on live, . Not really like "live" , because the mad rush to be like live, is what's killing all the work already done. It's really not of best interest to race with live, because SOE Corp does it for the money ( they don't care if no one plays in Unrest), and we just want to play. When Verant was in charge, he did it for the game too.
Every little detail has to be in place: Muddites in Beholders Maze blind you, not every freaking caster in the game! The npcs' spells have to be tweaked according to each npc, not just a big "blob" of spells that have every possible spell to the class.
I started this with ax_peq, but now I realize that there's more to it than just detailing the zones; There has to be a "balance" between all the zones you have available.
If you want PvP, or just Raid, only want high level zones, then this is not to your interest whats out now might work - or maybe what you really wanted is what Everquest Live is mostly become today: A giant,fancy "chat room" where users dress up like paper dolls and brag/show off their latest buy from Bazaar with plat they bought on the web.
So anyways. I started - it's no big deal, just work that needs to be done, sort of like a "data-entry" job but with no pay. I'll start with one zone at a time, and will not move to the next zone, untill the one I have is done.
The other zones are not eliminated, just blocked - so if anyone gets bored with what they have, they can always open up a compatible zone.
On Live if I remember the boat was a zone within a zone, so if you were a slow booter or crashed, you'd log back in on the "boat zone" no matter where it was. Obviously, we can't do that but we can setup delays and such...
Hybrid Mode
