EQ: Elder Dragons, Heart of Heroes. Made to stay, made for heroes!

Damn this sucks - RIP level 25 Shaman
Was fun grouping with Death and Yawg - server was really fun while it was running.

I had been sent this image from a friend and heard that Thalix was trying to blame Secrets for his failure at running a server for more than a week.

Just to give a bit of background information, Secrets is not the only person who has tried to help Thalix and been repaid by Thalix spitting in their face.

When Thalix originally made his website it said things like "Professional IT Personnel", "Machine Learning Anticheat", and many other buzzwords. Thalix is the type of person who likes to string together technical terms without knowing what they mean to make it seem like he knows what he's talking about to players.

As an EQEmulator developer myself, I had asked about his "machine learning anticheat" and he had the same reaction to me as he did to Secrets. Saying that I "attacked" him and blocking me on Discord. Somebody on here asked how Secrets knew his server was going to fail. The reason is simple, and it's because he decided not to put it on the EQEmu list (which makes absolutely no sense). There have been servers that have been a million times better than his that have decided to only put it up on their own LS and they have all failed. I would like to point out that due to the optimizations to EQEmu over the years you can run an EQEmu server on a calculator. I would like to see some proof that Thalix is paying 15k a month on hosting, or that his server has been getting DDoSed (Show us the traffic?).

It turns out his "machine learning" anticheat is a packet that someone posted publicly 2 1/2 years ago. A lot of the things that Thalix had listed in the features section of his site was the direct result of other people's work. My personal opinion is that Thalix finally realized he was in over his head and decided to drop the server. Blaming Secrets for it gives him an easy way out.

I would also like to point out that all the stuff he's saying about Secrets "looking at peoples porn" is absolutely retarded. He is only saying that because Secrets and I got in an argument months ago and I said that as a joke. Secrets never had a "crypto miner" embedded in his DLL (which he has posted the source to publicly in numerous locations). To this day Secrets and I aren't the best fans of each other, but what Thalix is trying to do here is disgusting.

Show us the traffic and show us your 15k a month hosting bill, please also show some correspondence from your host saying that this DDoS attack has taken down the entire datacenter? Nobody is burning a botnet on an EQEmu server thats not even on the main list and has less than 100 players. Give me a break.

For those of you who are looking for a semi-custom old world EQ server that's ran by someone who actually does this shit for real be on the lookout for EQEmpires in 2-3 months. I will make an advertisement post here when I am ready to release it. You're disgusting Thalix.

Sucks…I had this downloaded and thought about firing it up after the holiday. Once again we can’t have nice things.

RIP.

really sad, frustrating, and pretty shitty that our relatively small community would potentially cannibalize itself over some petty ego shit. not unrealistic, just frustrating and disappointing for those of us looking for a continuation of our small community.

though I responded to Thalix's post blaming a member of our forum, I didn't put anyone's name in my mouth. just a general shame to anyone that would betray our community for petty bullshit. even more disappointing if the true culprits are those crying wolf.

for likely obvious sentimental reasons, I've stayed glued to the TLP news on this board for the last... too many years... despite having never played EQ in any form since like 2005 or so, post quitting after Live Velious and returning for a weekend or two of Mercenary fun.

for whatever reason, this server announcement enticed me more than the hyped TLPs, and I was excited to dive in. probably silly, considering.

Though, I suppose it's par for the course that EQ should be both buoyed and hamstrung by the fanaticism of its fanbase.

RIP.

Damn, I was actually enjoying this. I could tell the servers were experiencing some latency but was hoping it would eventually get better.

Whatever the reasons, it sucks. I'm just glad I didn't have more free time to sink into it.

I guess we just wait for that new server in 2-3 months that’s semi custom? Any chance we can get a teaser as to more details?

The server info on the EQEmu site says it will be a classic custom server with Diablo style loot.

He has a forum setup here where you seem to be able to download and test the client after registering?

Diablo style loot sounds kinda ehh for EQ. Will take so long to establish a market and by the time you realize an item is in the meta you’ll have sold it or “upgraded” it.

Szeth said:

I guess we just wait for that new server in 2-3 months that’s semi custom? Any chance we can get a teaser as to more details?

Click to expand...

Surprised not many more folks have played on the plethora of custom EQ servers over the years.

I'm equally surprised that many more haven't attempted to make them. They're easy to make, and even easier to pump out content for.

Erronius said:

All I've ever heard about them are good stories interspersed with horror stories.

I'm not sure who would be worse: the emu community, or the people running the servers

Click to expand...

Judging by this thread...

Part of what drew me into this server was that it was just opening. I have never played on an old school combat table server that was just opening. I played a lot of live, p99 and eqmac, but never got to play right when any of them released.

Witless said:

EQEmulator - Server Info

EQEmulator is an open-source Everquest emulation project for creating custom Everquest servers.

www.eqemulator.org

The server info on the EQEmu site says it will be a classic custom server with Diablo style loot.

He has a forum setup here where you seem to be able to download and test the client after registering?

Click to expand...

Szeth said:

Diablo style loot sounds kinda ehh for EQ. Will take so long to establish a market and by the time you realize an item is in the meta you’ll have sold it or “upgraded” it.

Click to expand...

Yeah I have this mindmap that I wrote up a few months ago, some of this information may change slightly as we move forward.



And Szeth, I agree with you to an extent. I first started messing around with "diablo style" loot in ~2012. So I have more experience than I'd like to admit observing the growing pains and issues with systems like this. I put diablo style in quotes because it isn't true diablo loot. It basically just iterates through all the loottables in the DB and collects items based on a predetermined set of requirements and pushes them to a new loottable. Each level has 3 loottables (could easily add more). In addition to this system there are "FV rules" for 99% of items (Epic and epic-related items are still no-drop). Most clickies under 125HP except for chest slots are clickable by all classes (this is fun to balance, but have most broken items fixed). I would also like to mention that the Diablo style loot tapers off as you get higher and once you start to approach max level and start doing the actual hard content it turns into a more traditional pseudo tradeskill combine that doesn't require any tradeskills.

I guess the main kinda "draw" of the server is going to be the "Heroic" and "Challenge Mode" dungeons (I'm not creative I know). Just as a quick example we can use Crushbone. The base version of Crushbone is exactly the same (with diablo loot I guess), however outside there is an NPC that offers an attunement quest. Once you finish this attunement quest you get flagged for Heroic Crushbone. The Heroic version of the zone will scale to your level (or group avg is appropriate), the bosses will have new mechanics, so on and so forth.

I am basically trying to bring WoW M+ to EQ. The main reason I started this server, (as I was wanting to retire from doing this shit) is for my dad. Unfortunately he is starting to lose his memory, Everquest is a passion we have shared together my whole life, and I'd love to use my skills to bring some type of joy to him and any others that may want to experience some nostalgia.

If you have further questions about my server you can add me on Discord (Splose#1994) I'd be happy to talk about it.

Szeth said:

Part of what drew me into this server was that it was just opening. I have never played on an old school combat table server that was just opening. I played a lot of live, p99 and eqmac, but never got to play right when any of them released.

Click to expand...

I agree, being on the ground floor of a server that at least starts as a classic experience was a big draw. The custom content coming at the end game is nice as it turns into EQ+ after the nostalgia wears off. I also liked the fact it was a no box server, but I understand that long term you need a real healthy population to pull that off, and that’s not an easy thing to get.

Yeah - it would have been a struggle to get population to actually raid etc, but I was going to just level, explore, and see where it went. I have an office job that allows me the luxury of playing during the day, so it was a nice reprieve considering how slow it's been at work lately.

S Secrets you seem to be in the know, do you know of any other servers beyond Splose’s that are currently in the works?

Szeth said:

Yeah - it would have been a struggle to get population to actually raid etc, but I was going to just level, explore, and see where it went. I have an office job that allows me the luxury of playing during the day, so it was a nice reprieve considering how slow it's been at work lately.

Click to expand...

well maybe you should play TBC classic with us then.

Witless said:

S Secrets you seem to be in the know, do you know of any other servers beyond Splose’s that are currently in the works?

Click to expand...

There's plenty that come and go.

Here's a few that I know of currently. I know Project Lazarus and Shards of Dalaya has been around forever, as has Sanctuary in some form.

Out of these, I think Project Lazarus is my favorite for "Custom EQ" - but you have to undo in your mind that MQ2 is bad before playing on it and be okay with boxing.

Project Lazarus - a 6box, custom content, small-group progression server that allows MQ2 for everything except automation and warping, with a FV ruleset.

DreadBox - mostly solo with 3box limit and custom content/QOL

Sanctuary - a 1-box server that focuses on replacing the entire game world as opposed to recreating everquest and its many expansions

Classless - a completely custom mechanic stat-scaling server that uses normal EQ content and adds its own twists to the game

Shards of Dalaya - one of the oldest EQEmu servers, used to be known as Winter's Roar. Highly custom, and completely reimagines the world of Norrath as Dalaya with its own lore.

Ya'll remember that browser EQ game that was originally posted here on the boards? That shit was so fun. But then apparently he got threatened by DBG and started turning everything into non EQ assets and it got ruined. Basically you could go from zone to zone and kill random mobs. The "zones" were just screenshots of the zone, but had all the music/sound/pictures of mobs. Loot was random, but they were original EQ items. Loved that game.