RFC EQ Emu Server

Having servers hosted under the forum would be a good start to draw more people into the community. I think it would be a solid plan, actually. Creating the server from scratch might be more of a headache than it's worth however. Have you/we considered possibly reaching out to Rogean and asking if we could have a server hosted through him, sponsored by us. Working out a deal with him to essentially pay for upkeep, and time spent for errors coding? Where as Customer Service can be handled through our forum and discord?

A SZ reboot with some vital rule changes designed to retain players and even out teams would be phenomenal.

@a_skeleton_03 If this is something that would be considered lmk. I've got some very reasonable ideas on how to make it happen.

I would want a solo or duo server, classic sucks so bad these days.

Dad server! P99 ruleset is pure aids.

pharmakos said:

I hope it ends up being a full-difficulty server if it happens. The most fun I've ever had is on servers that struggle a bit to get enough warm bodies to take down raids. It's a great feeling when you and your small tight knit group finally get strong enough to take down a dragon. Way more fun that zerg races to clear every raid in the first few days.

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While I agree ain't nobody has time for that... Even if it was solo friendly and then need 20+ for raids that would be cool. You could see the sights and still need community to kill shit.

The Sullon Zek Server (Deity based team PvP)

The Sullon Zek server is a new server with a new rule set. The rules for this server are very different than those on any other EverQuest server. In general the server is based on the concept of a PvP teams server, like Tallon and Vallon Zek, but with the teams chosen based on which god the character worships rather than the race of the character.

Sullon Zek rules:

1. Player v. Player (PvP) combat can occur between any characters that are not on the same team, regardless of level. A level 50 character can attack and kill a level 6 character if that character is not a member of his alliance. But rules 2 and 3 apply.

2. Characters will be immune to PvP combat until they have gained enough strength to survive the struggle. Characters below 6th level are not able to participate in PvP combat, unless they stray from city and newbie zones. As soon as a character 'dings' into 6th level he or she will become PvP enabled.

3. Characters will lose experience when killed in PvP combat if the character that killed them is within 5 levels. The amount of experience lost will be the same amount that is lost if that character is killed by an NPC. Your corpse can be resurrected by a cleric to partially restore lost experience.

4. Characters will only be able to loot coins from other characters, and then only if the victim was within 5 levels of the killer. Only the character getting the killing blow will be able to loot the corpse.

5. Players may only have one character at a time on this server. This means that you will have to delete the existing character in order to create a new one. Because we are introducing a new class and a new race with the release of Shadows of Luclin we plan to make allowances at that time for those that wish to explore these new characters.

6. Characters will not be able to group with anyone that is not on their Deity Team.

7. Characters will not be able to invite someone to join their guild that is not on their Deity Team.

8. Combat skills' effective value is capped at 2 levels above a players current level.

9. Resistance debuff spells have a 50% increased effectiveness against player characters.

10. /consider returns only three kinds of results when used against player characters. 'Green' means that the character is below your range. 'White' or 'black' means that the character is within your range. 'Red' means that they are above your range. 'In range' means +/- 5 levels.

11. /consider will also display a message indicating what team the target is on. Members of your own team will be displayed as an 'ally'.

12. Faction hits for PvP will be taken for killing characters within their racial home towns. Killing a human in any human starting city will cause a faction loss with the locals. Freeport, Qeynos and Surefall Glade are considered starting cities for humans. All of Greater Faydark and Felwithe are considered the starting city for all elves (high elves and wood elves), except dark elves. Paineel and Erudin are both starting cities for erudites, and killing one in either city (regardless of their place of origin) will result in a faction loss with that city. Other cities are not considered home towns, despite being run and controlled by a certain race. For example, HighHold is not a human home town. Thurgadin is not a dwarven home town.

13. Rules such as the Play Nice Policy do not apply to this server. Characters have the ability on this server to deal with their conflicts through combat. Causing experience loss by 'training' NPCs on other characters is not an offense that would warrant a warning this server. HOWEVER: All rules regarding general decency still apply. Cursing, threats and other such things will be dealt with sternly, and are still unacceptable behavior on any PvP server.

14. Beneficial effects can not be used on members of another team.

15. No character will be able to bind in dungeon zones.

16. 'Buff' spells will not affect characters more than 20 levels lower than the spell level. Existing spell restrictions on spells over 50th level will supercede this rule.

17. There will be 'insignia' dropped on the corpses of characters over 20th level that are killed by another character. We plan to allow those to be turned in for a reward of some sort. What that reward will be is undetermined at this time, but we are leaning towards a team reward rather than a personal reward.

18. Naked corpses will disappear when looted by a player character. If you are naked and killed by a player character, your corpse will disappear when it is looted.

The 'Teams':

The Good Alliance consists of: Erollisi Marr, Mithaniel Marr, Rodcet Nife, Quellious, Tunare
The Evil Alliance consists of: Bertoxxulous, Cazic Thule, Innoruuk, Rallos Zek
The Neutral Alliance consists of: Brell Serilis, Bristlebane, Karana, Prexus, Solusek Ro, The Tribunal, Veeshan.

There are no Agnostics on Sullon Zek. With the new influence of the gods, those that had not declared for one deity or another have been killed. Everyone now worships a deity, if not out of respect, love or fear of the god, then out of fear for their lives at the hands of fanatics.
Barbarian Shaman and Warriors can choose to worship Mithaniel Marr. Mithaniel Marr was unwilling to abandon all of the noble barbarians that served the good, and many declared themselves in favor of an alliance with Good.
Monks will be able to worship Veeshan. The Temple in Qeynos has discovered some ancient writings that opened up new avenues.
We will be including a method for the Good and Neutral teams to use Summon Corpse or something similar.

SZ ruleset has always been interesting to me, I think it is a niche that is not currently being filled and has some appeal for traditional red and blue players. Would be interested to hear from people that have played this ruleset what their experience was and what the potential problems and fixes might be.

Trying to limit it to one char per person is not realistically enforceable, there will be spies and traitors just deal with it. Some of the alliances don’t have access to certain classes, might need to tweak the teams or allow a few non-traditional deity choices, but I think it’s ok that not everyone gets access to everything. I remember the good team was very low pop on old SZ, was that due to ruleset imbalance or just player preference?

keypusher said:

SZ ruleset has always been interesting to me, I think it is a niche that is not currently being filled and has some appeal for traditional red and blue players. Would be interested to hear from people that have played this ruleset what their experience was and what the potential problems and fixes might be.

Trying to limit it to one char per person is not realistically enforceable, there will be spies and traitors just deal with it. Some of the alliances don’t have access to certain classes, might need to tweak the teams or allow a few non-traditional deity choices, but I think it’s ok that not everyone gets access to everything. I remember the good team was very low pop on old SZ, was that due to ruleset imbalance or just player preference?

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Both preference and ruleset, really. I played TZ until SZ opened. Moved to SZ on opening day and never played another Live server again. A lot of this stuff is a matter of opinion, but at the time the consensus was that team Evil had the most/best race/class combinations, followed by Neuts and then team Good.

When I was one of the lead GMs at SGO in the early days of Vanguard, I put a lot of effort into fixing/modifying Vanguard's pvp servers. That shit was like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic though- you can't fix pvp if you can't even fix the base game. After I left SGO I spent a ton of time on just about every emu pvp server, up until a few years ago. My time dealing with pvp in MMOs (especially EQ), has taught me a few things that are critical to running a sustainable pvp server.

The key to a good pvp server is sustainability. You can't ask players on a pvp server not to dominate the competition, but the natural result when that happens is that you drive the majority of the player base off the server. The trick is to build a solution into the server- both in the ruleset, but more importantly in the environment. The fine line you have to walk is preventing one team (guild/side/group, whatever) from being able to monopolize too much, while at the same time being careful not to be so restrictive that you make pvp boring and pointless. There is a way to walk that line, but it takes some clever design ideas.

A SZ style server with the following changes would be perfect:

- Different teams
- Slightly modified ruleset
- Custom, team-based NPC guards placed in strategic zones/places
- Rotating, team-based "hotzones" that fit with lore and also make use of custom NPC guards

That's all it would take to make a pvp server 100% more sustainable and fun. You could also use some of those changes to add in some really cool event stuff as well.

Like I said, if a_skeleton_03 or any other serious/capable developer is interested, I'd be willing to help out- both with design concepts and perhaps even in a GM capacity.

Box limits also require constant supervision. The lower the limit, the more the supervision. FFA/FIF engagement rules require even more supervision. If your server becomes popular, this problem grows even more. This is the big reason TAKP devs didn't start up another server (some of us wanted a 1 box server, perhaps with custom content) and partly why TAKP is rotations and 3 box. Administration is something nobody wants to do. Getting a stable server up with custom content isn't the hard part nowadays. The hard part is finding competent and dependable staff to police the server and commit to it for 5+ years. Good luck with that

A pvp server would require more supervision than a blue server, for sure. I'd strongly recommend against any type of ROE on a red server though. One of the best things about SZ was that it was pretty self regulated. No bullshit raid calendars or lines. You just took what you wanted- if you could.

Anyway, no ROE means that your GMs are free to spend 100% of their time on three basic things:
1. Actual customer service for game-related issues (geometry issues, bug issues, etc.)
2. Monitoring for exploits/illegal 3rd party programs/illegal boxing
3. GM driven event stuff

SZ ruleset requires less supervision than blue...overall. I mean shit, look at P99's raid scene and rules, It's constant AIDS. You're better off just letting people train than trying to mediate two groups of spergs with 10+ years of elf case law and FRAPs footage to parse through.

it takes a lot of work to go from stock eqemu to a worth while classic-velious experience (you wont do it if this is your first experience with eqemu (dev/db work.)) then again torven is right, a lot of people dont care about pinpoint accuracy. but if you go that route your just another 1 of the 500 servers out there

the people clamoring about a pvp server. imo, the only serious adaptation of that i could see existing is if someone uses the takp source (if they still release it after pop (which imo i dont think they should, they've done a lot of work.)) uses the mods to the client hayner/secrets have to make it better (3rd person wheel) and add mq2/myseq detection with 1 box rules. thats the only pvp server that would break the trash <100 pop we always see from red/zeks

There will be a delay after we launch Planes of Power and when we (re)open our source. Maybe a year, depending on what the developers decide. I wouldn't have gotten involved unless the project were open to begin with and we only closed because our generosity was taken advantage of. The primary goal is preservation however so it has to reopen eventually.

Actually I had always wanted to see some good custom servers go up and I improved our editor in part to make creating one a bit easier.

Locnar said:

Already you've gone too far down the slippery slope of ez mode. Reinstate the mousewheel and then you've messed with original caster vs melee pvp balance.

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I agree. Personally I don't mind not having the mousewheel on takp. I think people who play on red99/titanium dont realize how many other features they use that are out of era.