EQ TLP 2024 Teek (Random loot) & Tormax (Traditional) #neckbeardnostalgia

Rajaah said:

I could see arguments being made in either direction for AAs. Personally I'm looking forward to having AAs, but unfortunately it's gonna make personas a bit less appealing. Keeping up with their AAs is a bridge too far, and now at max level instead of working on personas, there'll be AAs to do on my main persona.

RIP persona-leveling. Probably doing me a favor though.



Given how awesome Velious armor textures look (and the sheer variety of them) it's a damn shame they didn't keep evolving the game in that direction. Luclin models coincided with me losing interest in the game in 2001, along with the phasing-out of dragons in favor of 10 minute boss fights with green blobs. The character models and armor graphics were a hard reset that nobody was asking for, same with the spell graphics.



GoD is great now but back then it sure wasn't. There was also the small fact that Time-geared players were getting flattened by random trash enemies if they had the balls to leave the first zone Natimbi. Combine that with the fugly visuals and it's no wonder almost everybody left for the new game that recaptured early EQ's fantasy vibe.

In other news... Joffrey and Sansa, huh?

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Back in 1999 I didn't get this reference. Props for making it so early, before SOIAF was huge in the cultural lexicon.

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I forgot how old the first book was. That's a fun Easter egg.

Kithani said:

Releasing a half assed expac of overtuned extra-dimensional goatmen in exotic locales with true high fantasy mystique such as “Vxed” and “Tipt” at the same time as your competition launching WoW killed EQ lol

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Yea an overtuned expansion was the final nail. WoW was a turbo casual version of EQ that you could progress in daily without the help of others and run on a potato PC, the choice was clear for a lot of people.

If you think Luclin killed WoW... how's P99 these days?

The original character models were inspired. Remember the ogre ass scratching? The male dwarf tumble? The PC and NPC character models in vanilla EQ were cohesive and had a retro fantasy RPG vibe. The revamped ones in Luclin were hideous, malformed, and amateurish.

I'd like to know who was responsible for the revamp of the character models. I believe Jeff Butler knows. Some ex-EQ devs on this forum may know as well.

My money is on SOE President Kelly Flock. According to Butler's YouTube video interview with Flock, Flock's constant meddling with EQ is the reason he and Brad left to form Sigil. But it may have been Smedley.

hats said:

it’s been said a hundred times, but all they had to do was keep making new textures for the old models

new models were what drained my interest away. some are obviously okay with them especially after 20 years, but as a kid it marked a turning point to where i felt like i don’t recognize everquest anymore. it underscored all of the other changes and highlighted just how much of a high effort relearning it would be, at a time when other games were available

i would have more than likely come back to a later retail expansion faster if they just kept expanding the old armor. now i just do it because there really aren’t any other games available, at least to my now aged taste

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Old Man Potter said:

The original character models were inspired. Remember the ogre ass scratching? The male dwarf tumble? The PC and NPC character models in vanilla EQ were cohesive and had a retro fantasy RPG vibe. The revamped ones in Luclin were hideous, malformed, and amateurish.

I'd like to know who was responsible for the revamp of the character models. I believe Jeff Butler knows. Some ex-EQ devs on this forum may know as well.

My money is on SOE President Kelly Flock. According to Butler's YouTube video interview with Flock, Flock's constant meddling with EQ is the reason he and Brad left to form Sigil. But it may have been Smedley.

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I don't remember which episode it was, but they discussed the models a bit more in depth on one of aLovingRobot's interviews and I they said they were so behind on shipping Luclin they had to bring in some randos at the last minute to finish up some of the models. I want to say it was Butler ushering in the chaos.

The entire Luclin project was completely mishandled and was forced out early and unfinished just to meet their release date. Vex Thal itemization didn't begin until a week or two after it shipped which is why the key quest was purposefully broken.

The Luclin models are badly animated which is why they look so stiff and awkward. Old models are better animated (compare the flying kick animations for a particularly egregious example, old one has far more weight and realism to it). I seem to remember them promising to redo the animations shortly after launch but they never did. I actually asked about this in the AMA we had here a few years ago but nobody at DPG seems to remember that promise or plan on doing anything about it now.

It's a thing WoW absolutely nailed, the poly counts on the classic WoW models aren't high even by the standards of the day but they are animated extremely well. It's right up there with the music as one of my favorite aspects of classic WoW, it really brings the world to life.

Old skeletons and old wolves are in place in some zones but it's spotty.

Lambourne said:

The Luclin models are badly animated which is why they look so stiff and awkward. Old models are better animated (compare the flying kick animations for a particularly egregious example, old one has far more weight and realism to it). I seem to remember them promising to redo the animations shortly after launch but they never did. I actually asked about this in the AMA we had here a few years ago but nobody at DPG seems to remember that promise or plan on doing anything about it now.

It's a thing WoW absolutely nailed, the poly counts on the classic WoW models aren't high even by the standards of the day but they are animated extremely well. It's right up there with the music as one of my favorite aspects of classic WoW, it really brings the world to life.

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You are spot on. The original animations were superb in their detail and visual impact; they had weight and impact. The new animations were awkward and awful.

Your assessment of the WoW animations is 100% right. I spent an entire month studying all of WoW's character animations and breaking them down into component parts for a future MMO. The WoW animations (which included 10x more animations for each race than EQ's animations) are unsurpassed in their quality and should be taught at video game art colleges and used as a reference for any aspiring character animator. Timing of animations with appropriate blood effects and sound effects is critical too.

Jeff Butler revealed in that video interview with Shawn Lordf that John Smedley transferred a lot of the original EQ team to EQ2 and that's why they were forced to bring inexperienced junior animators onto the Luclin team from other SOE games (non-MMOs). The same thing happened to the design team, and we had GM admins assuming positions of power and influence on the dev team.

We've seen this shuffling of staff decimate other games. Example: Blizzard fucked up WoW by transferring all the top talent (Afrasiabi, Kaplan, Pardo, Metzen, etc.) to Project Titan leaving the benchwarming "B" team holding the bag. The result was Mists of Pandaria and other assorted botched expansions.


Almost every single problem in the video game industry can be traced to corporate incompetence.

Needless said:

What's the EXP bonus % going atm? thats nice it seems to be going until the 22nd.

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I wasn't able to track it down to be sure but a majority of events are 50%. Forth of July is 76%, the Extra Life bonuses scale with donations but most are 50%.

Rajaah said:

Old world skeleton models and old style spell effects should be toggle-able IMO

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But then they couldn't sell these as loot crate illusion items in the marketplace.

Lambourne said:

It's a thing WoW absolutely nailed, the poly counts on the classic WoW models aren't high even by the standards of the day but they are animated extremely well. It's right up there with the music as one of my favorite aspects of classic WoW, it really brings the world to life.

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This was the beta test for "You have 14 days."