/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5507262
I play on P99 occasionally. I started playing 20 years ago in the beta and stopped at Luclin. AMA

>>5507395
>I started playing 20 years ago in the beta and stopped at Luclin
So you played the game for two years, maybe three? Why'd you stop at Luclin?

Also, what drew you to something like P99?

>>5507421
>So you played the game for two years, maybe three?
Guess so but it felt longer. Luclin made it feel like a different game at that point. Player auctions were phased out, a lot of old zones were abandoned, and I hated the new models

>what drew you to something like P99?
Nostalgia for classic EQ. I've been playing P99 off and on since it started. Wish they'd start a new server though. Always preferred early game over end game in MMOs.

>>5507262
I only play on Red99. Blue servers are for pussies.

>>5508167
>red

aren't there only a handful of players on red on any given time?

Been playing on Mangler but it's pretty bad. The entire game has degenerated into boxing 6 characters to solo camp shit for krono which you then use to pay the monthly subscription costs for your 6 characters. Anything worth money, no matter how little, has at least 1 level 50 mage parked on it botting 24/7. DB cut costs by effectively removing all policing from the game. They no longer enforce any kind of play nice policy, meaning bots can just set up right on top of your camp, everything is a DPS race, trains are acceptable, anything goes. Everyone uses 3rd party cheating software with no repercussions.

The one thing live TLP EQ has going for it is instanced raid zones, so you can actually raid at endgame if you want to, unlike P99.

>>5507421
not him but, Luclin was really a big shift in the feel of the game. Personally I held out until PoP, which really killed it for me along with LDoN, despite the PoP content itself being pretty good.

Before Luclin, expansions were strictly about expanding the world, and the exploration and scale was mostly congruent with what had come before. They also had pretty cool themes. Kunark had tropical jungle and volcanic themes with reptilian races, more Frogloks, and dragons. Velious was ice-themed and felt even more remote than Kunark, and had ice Dwarves, Giants, and Dragons engaged in ongoing conflicts. The final zones in Velious were very epic (North Temple of Veeshan and Sleeper's Tomb).

With Luclin, the moon just came out of nowhere. It felt really bolted-on and didn't expand the lore in a way that really fit with what came before. You had whole cities of humans there, along with weird aliens and snake-men that were a bit of a let-down after the Dragons in Kunark and Velious. For whatever reason, the Luclin theme just didn't work for me the way the Kunark/Velious themes did.

Luclin introduced free(ish) fast travel, which was kind of necessary at that point due to the increased size of the world, but did start to take away some of the feeling of vastness and immersion.

Luclin also introduced a whole bunch of new shit no one asked for, like new character models, a furfag race, and a new class (beastlord) in a game that already had more than classes than combat roles and abilities were spread very thin across them. Although, the "Alternate Advancement" system that allowed players to allocate XP on side abilities rather than primary level grinding was an interesting addition.

Finally, the Luclin release itself was a massive debacle. There were bugs, severe performance issues, increased graphics requirements, and blatantly unfinished content. And some of the content that was finished was poorly designed (eg The Grey).

I wrote some scripts a couple months back to get EQ zones, models, and animations imported into Blender and UE4.

>>5508786
This looks surprisingly comfy. Post more. I love how old environments look in modern engines. My autistic pleasure.

>>5508796
Didn't really take a lot of screenshots with graphics settings turned up. Here's a webm of the abomination that resulted from attempting to apply the built-in UE4 skeletal animations to the very non-standard EQ character model skeletons.

>>5508807
Could be interesting.

And here's one from in Blender.

>>5508786
I really hope DB goes bankrupt soon and EQ gets bought out by a company that gives a shit about the IP. Just take all the original assets and port the original game to a modern engine and reboot everything. Wouldn't cost much and people love that retro low poly shit.

I'm sure the rights will just get picked up by another investment firm that just wants the passive cash shop income, though.

>>5508991
Is EQ even worth continuing like that? The name might have some marketing value, but the world itself is kind of generic and the backstory is ass. If a company was interested in something like that they'd just make their own IP, sort of like Pantheon but hopefully not as terrible.

>>5508813
Beautiful. Never played Everquest, but would love to.
Any place were I can download the original Everquest old models?

>>5509440
>Any place were I can download the original Everquest old models?

Like, something you can open in a 3d modeling program? Or you mean using the old models with the EQ client? You can use the old models in modern EQ just by going to the settings in the launcher. But modern EQ is kind of a shitfest so I wouldn't bother. P99 is okay if all you're interested in is leveling a character, the endgame scene is trash.

>>5508813
El Goblino :^)

>>5509469
>Like, something you can open in a 3d modeling program?
This. I want to study them, to create similar models.
I'm the guy who did La Creatura and Pepe in low poly.

>>5509831
As far as I'm aware, there's a really old 3ds Max script for importing zones and models, but I don't know if you can still find it. Aside from that, I've seen a couple projects for loading models into actual game engines. I think the script I wrote is the only recent project for getting zones and models into a 3d modeling program and the only one that does animations, but I haven't publicly released it since it's kind of a mess and not complete yet. I probably will once I'm satisfied with it, or at least anonymously distribute the .blend files.

It's probably not the best source to look at for how to properly do low poly stuff, though. The zones especially have awful geometry to start with which was even further bastardized because the zone files for distribution with the game were ran through some script to break them up into thousands of chunks for culling purposes. Also a lot of weird things that only makes sense in the context of EQ's rendering system, like overlapping faces with opposite normals since it apparently couldn't do two-sided textures or something.

Character models don't seem to be butchered by scripts (aside from the typical triangulation needed for 3d hardware, so any quads or whatever would've been broken up), but jesus are they just poorly designed. And it's almost like they weren't modeled with animation in mind and the skeletons were just added on after the fact. Most animations deform the living fuck out of the characters, polygons just straight up turning inside out and shit. Was probably one of the main reasons they replaced the character models with the abomination Luclin models.

>>5508167

hi Tune!

cringing 4 u

>>5508239
>>5508167

there's barely a population of 50 red players on project 1999 red

it's hey day was 2011-2013, maybe 2014 still had 300ish

>>5508758

im with you, luclin only pissed me off and while pop was allegedly good, i was burnt out by this launch never to return until project 1999 for another 7 year run

>>5509875
Sorry that aint me.

UBN Crew here. Fuck Dentists, and all those other lame crews.

Played a lot back in the late 90s and thought about it a few years ago since it's mostly free, but I don't have to time for it anymore.

Guide to EQ Live:
>go on a shady RMT website and buy 6 krono for half price
>use the krono to buy subscriptions on 6 accounts
>create 6 mages on a TLP server
>hit level cap in a day
>park your 6 mages on a cash camp like GEBs, start up MacroQuest, and afk camp it 24/7 for the next 6 months
>send a mage off to ectunnel to dump all your GEBs every few days
>use all the krono you "earn" to buy more bot accounts so you can expand your mage army to camp all the GEBs in every pick
>use surplus krono to buy loot rights to all the best raid gear for your "main"
>beat the game without ever having to actually play it

>>5509881
PoP had:
+ Good raid content
+ Good zone variety, exploring was fun
+ Mostly lore-appropriate.

The biggest issue was the combination of increased level cap and the new planar zones all being connected through the Plane of Knowledge, which itself was connected by teleport stones to every old-world city. This meant that a high level player rarely ever had any reason to leave the Planes, and if he did he could just quickly warp wherever he needed to go in the old world.

This effectively removed all high-level characters from the old world, and made the old world feel even more empty and obsolete. Frankly they missed a golden opportunity to reinvigorate old world zones by adding planar gates to interesting places.

They subsequently tried to do this with LDoN but at least for me that had the opposite effect, because the LDoN zones were bland, felt procedurally generated, and worst of all introduced the Wayfarer Brotherhood dynamic which made the zones feel like a carnival. Go play in these cookie-cutter dungeons and then redeem points at the front desk for prizes!

>>5508486
>>5510257
Honestly sounds like a nightmare. What a shame.

>>5510956
The second any MMORPG introduces game time tokens that can be bought for cash and sold in-game, the game goes to shit. It's just sanctioned RMT. At least when RMT is banned people have to be sneaky about it and it doesn't define the entire game economy.

>>5509856
> I probably will once I'm satisfied with it, or at least anonymously distribute the .blend files.
Well, you can always submit it to The Models Resource

>but jesus are they just poorly designed.
Yeah, I noticed this going by some screenshots and videos.
People will call me a weeb, but most western developers sucked at low poly at the time.
The models were bad, the art direction was all over the place, the designs were crude, but somehow it looks interesting.

>>5507262
this art looks amazing

>>5509109
everquest(1) alone makes over 150 million dollars a year in revenue.
people laugh but the reality is every other game daybreak owns is held up by fucking everquests existence.

>>5508758
i agree with you that luclin was hit or miss, drastically so.
that said fuck you, the grey owned and so did szera temple. snake men rule.
they aimed to create a more alien world and they did a pretty good job of it to be honest.
the lore however was quite insane and I could've done without hyper evolved kerran furry race.

>>5510257
You forgot the part where the other macroquest afk niggers train your mages to get your camp.
fuckin efreeti boots

This game's economy is so fucked up. Just got a drop worth 50 krono. That's $850 USD. For an item that will be outdated in 4-8 months and whatever benefit it gives is something you'd only notice after long term statistical analysis of your combat logs. Game's full of boomers with more money than sense.

>>5512767
lmao imagine trying to farm actual platinum to buy said item.

>>5512628
The problem with The Grey at release is that it was easily exploited by AoE groups with no risk. It's bad design and only immature wizards had a problem with that nerf.
> so did szera temple. snake men rule.
Not compared to Dragons and lore-appropriate planes like Hate, Fear, Sky, and Growth.

>>5509856
>it's almost like they weren't modeled with animation in mind and the skeletons were just added on after the fact. Most animations deform the living fuck out of the characters, polygons just straight up turning inside out and shit. Was probably one of the main reasons they replaced the character models with the abomination Luclin models.
That seems unlikely to me. I think it's more likely that they had custom animation routines for the original game that don't align with whatever the industry standard is now, because original models all have good animations when you play the actual game. That includes idle animations, spell casting, combat animations, gestures, and so on. One of the most noticeable downgrades with the Luclin models is that the idle animations were entirely removed. The Luclin models just stand there like cardboard cutouts while the original models appear to be breathing, looking around, and just generally in a natural state of rest.

>>5513196
>aoe groups
literally always been a problem due to enchanter/wizard bullshit in certain zones
I think snake city was on par with the planes, it was definitely a toppest tier dungeon.
I am fond of some of the other zones too but I can agree some of the outside zones were really dull/lacking, they also have this weird effect where they seem to glow/radiate and its fucking aids on par with swaying trees.

I always wanted to play everquest but heard they ruined it with raid shit.
is there anyway to play it in its glory days?

>>5513225
If you're serious.
You can play live TLP servers, they're modernized servers going through the expacs in succession. The newest one is currently in classic( the very original game content).

If you want the DIEHARD real experience you can play project 1999. It comes with the original grind, difficulty and absurdities like corpse recovery. It also has contested raids since it has no instancing of any kind (unlike current live servers)
Both options have a decent playerbase. p99 is free, tlp requires a monthly sub.
https://www.project1999.com/
If you go for p99 you really really ought to read a guide for new players. EQ isn't very hard but its vague and nonsensical sometimes compared to modern mmos. Expect to take months to get max level on p99 as a new player.

>>5513216
>literally always been a problem due to enchanter/wizard bullshit in certain zones
AoE groups themselves aren't the problem. In most zones it's a reasonably balanced risk/reward scenario requiring a specialized group that knows what they're doing. At Luclin release, you had an outdoor zone densely packed with mobs and the entire zone could be easily obliterated by an enchanter and a couple of wizards. So they had to add some magic-resistant mobs to the mix to make things more interesting.

Before Luclin and The Grey, there was never a situation where AE tactics were so trivially done. Outdoor zones had wide varieties of mob types and were usually spread out such that it would take awhile to gather a large train of suitable mobs. In zones like Chardok and Sebilis, you needed a good bard puller and even then your kill rate over an hour or two wasn't going to be much better than a good chain-pulling group, even if you don't wipe (which is a bigger risk in an AE group than a normal group). And when you do wipe, you're doing a corpse run deep in a dungeon not just dragging your corpse to the zone boundary.

The Grey (at release) was carelessly and lazily populated compared to zones in previous expansions.

>>5512454
It's painfully dated though. Here, have something better.

>>5513225
As the last guy warned, OG EQ is pretty brutal in some circumstances. Just picking certain races just punishes you in EXP grind. Losing EXP on death, having to bind in cities (respawn point), Corpse run (you don't respawn with your loot, you get to go get it!), and you absolutely need to get along with people to get anywhere sometimes. It was a truly pioneering kinda game. I think you'll enjoy it as long as you have tempered expectations. I hope you do, it served me well for a few years myself when I played.

>>5513210
The animations are very straight forward. The deformation is visible in the actual game engine. Take a look at the inner thighs of a sitting wood elf female or the arm of a sitting dwarf. The main issue is that there is no weighting, vertices are assigned to vertex groups and every vertex in the group is rotated and offset equally. That means that the faces joining two vertex groups are going to get mutilated, and that's exactly what you see both in-game and when programmatically applying the transforms yourself.

>>5514216
vomit

>>5514216
WoW's "style" wouldn't be so bad if it were literally confined to WoW. But it turned into a cancer. First it was all the MMOs that tried to copy WoW would copy their style, too. Now it's like the entire fucking game industry trying to capitalize on retards that have been playing WoW since they were 8 and have the style burned into their brains.

>>5514375
Final fantasy kicked that though and it’s definitely kicking blizzard in the junk right now.

>>5514251
>sitting wood elf female

>>5514216
That looks like deviantart garbage t b h

Playin on that there Bristlebane trying to kill me some of them skyfire drakes

>>5513625
Chardok is a joke. Its not very dangerous because you always have somebody ready to evacuate your group. I can't actually recall if group ports had a chance to fail back then or not but I remember a number of easy escapes. on p99 its a joke, and its by far the best exp rates you can get and shits all over normal groups.

> Outdoor zones had wide varieties of mob types and were usually spread out such that it would take awhile to gather a large train of suitable mobs
bards wanna say hi

>>5514407
soul

>>5514407
I... I want to snap it off.

>>5514391
Is FFXIV really the best example? Gameplay-wise, it's a WoW clone (2.0 SMN was fucking embarrassing, it was just a Warlock clone right down to identical pets and skills) and half the game's assets are taken straight from FF11/12/13 like it was some garbage mobage

>>5514407
>wood elfs

>>5514407
>lambent woodelf
finna cum

>>5514451
you're still not demonstrating that you have even the slightest clue about the difference between The Grey at Luclin release and other zones where AoE tactics were popular and effective.

>>5516701
You suggested there was danger in chardok for mass pulling.
You don't get to talk about knowing/not knowing shit about everquest.

The problem with classic EQ is that the more players there are on a server the lower the quality of life is for all players. That's like, the exact opposite of what you would want from an MMORPG. Then you have these upcoming MMOs like Pantheon that want to preserve all the mechanics that lead to those problems instead of learning from them and it's like, why? Should a game's difficulty stem from the fact that the mobs and items you need to progress is permacamped by botters/RMT/larger guilds/whatever that you literally can't do anything about within the rules of the game?

Honestly, the most fun you'll have in EQ is the process of leveling your character. Once that's over or you otherwise decide that you want to do a meaningful quest or camp a worthwhile item, the game goes to shit. Hell, even the process of leveling could be tough since exp became a commodity to be sold and PLers would do anything to run you out of your camp.

>>5517571
>the most fun you'll have in EQ is the process of leveling your character

There were a lot of MUDs back in the day where there was no endgame and the goal was to just level your character. Remort systems were based, you'd max out your character's level for a specific class and then start over as a new class but retain some of the skills and/or stats from your previously mastered classes. Some were pretty complex with advanced classes you could unlock and race specific classes and progression.

Don't know if that could translate to a modern MMO. I think you'd have a problem a year or two down the line with ridiculously powerful characters and anyone trying to get into the game later on would be forever behind the curve. You see the same thing a lot in games with AA systems where nobody wants you unless you have max AAs but you can't max your AAs because nobody wants you.

One of the few things WoW did right was that the playing field effectively resets every expansion.

>>5517571
Leveling was fun, but I really enjoyed arguing on Cazic Thule Corner about raid rotation and other guild politics

>>5517262
Fucking try-hard shitposter still avoiding the original point.
Normally Everquest threads don't have low-IQ faggots like you.

>>5517571
>The problem with classic EQ is that the more players there are on a server the lower the quality of life is for all players
Not really, especially if you look over the long haul rather than just at one specific zone at one specific point in time. Part of the reason why people immersed in the world is because it was full of real people you interacted with routinely in a wide variety of ways; even if sometimes those interactions involved conflict and competition.

Suppose you set up a private server for yourself and a bunch of friends. Who is going to impressed by your Cloak of Flames? Who is going to care what you wear when you go to the bank in Kelethin or hang out at the Tunnel in East Commonlands? You won't be able to do anything at all without arranging it with friends. You won't meet new people in a pickup group, maybe someone who tells you something about the game you didn't know before. And while not being able to do any raids sucks, there's certainly an element of excitement to racing other guilds to a kill. Or even if you aren't racing, there's excitement in having to react to the game's schedule rather than setting your own. "Trakanon is up!" your guild hastily assembles whoever is online or can get online and takes a shot at the dragon.

If that stuff all sounds lame to you and the actual combat is all you really care about, that's probably the 20 years of evolution of social media and gaming industry in addition to you just being older.

>>5517801
You're naive. There were named spawns that were literally camped 24/7 by bots and RMT even in 1999, although most players at the time didn't understand what those things were and didn't realize even when it was plainly obvious. Things like waiting lists weren't enforced so it also wasn't unusual for guilds to monopolize camps for weeks or months at a time, handing it off from one guild member to another. There was no "competition" for these, if you tried to DPS race the named mobs you'd get suspended for KSing. A system that allows an individual or group to monopolize a resource in this way is bad design. If you wanted to obtain those GEBs legitimately your options were to either join such a guild which probably wouldn't want you since you seem to think the game was for fun while to these people it was serious business or pray that you're the first one to log in after a server reset, because it'd be a cold day in hell that you'd find the camp open on a high pop server.

Showing off your Cloak of Flames? Good luck getting one while it was still current endgame. Whether there was a hundred people on a server or twenty thousand, Nagafen spawned at the same rate. Your guild "hastily assembling" whoever was online at the time was not going to beat the 2 or 3 guilds per server that ran bots with ShowEQ to alert them the second a raid boss spawned and kept all their mains logged right there and ready to go. Again, that's not a competition when you're pitting people who are "playing for fun" against people who do it professionally and even cheat if it gives them an advantage.

There's a lot of people like you who romanticize the game and fantasize about aspects of it that they never experienced, but the reality was exactly what you would expect given the mechanics. Exploiting, cheating, and monopolizing. To the point where GMs were eventually forced to intervene to try to make the game more "fair".