What did you leave undone?

[Ravenwing]

Maybe it wouldn't have been necessary, but I had two uses in mind.

First, for use on the nearby mobs outside the event area - not necessarily the flurry drakes, which can be killed ahead of time, but the regular trash, which would have respawned during the event. Several times during the Vulak ring, the DT drakes and the hallway trash aggro'd for no reason anyone ever figured out. We speculated that it might have been a mini-drake pathing issue, as it seemed to happen during the hatchling waves, but nobody ever caught one running down the bridge. With the hall trash pacced, it was usually possible to blur the DT drakes and recover, but the DT drakes + the trash made for a wipe. I don't remember whether this happened every time, though, so maybe it would have been possible to avoid it with care.

Second, as a cheesy method of crowd control. For two boxers, or any small crew, to keep up with the timed nature of the event, we'd have to be very heavily focused on damage output; ideally, most of our toons would be nukers. If we start offtanking, and healing offtanks, and debuffing and re-debuffing offtanked mobs, we're probably giving up too much damage. Permapac might be dispensable if we fought entirely back on the bridge, out of aggro range of the room (duoing the event would pretty much require us to *start* most waves in this position anyways; no way are a pair of boxers handling the three flurry drake wave, or likely the 5+ mob waves, without splitting things up), but the positioning would be tough, it'd be tricky to keep the event from despawning on us, and it'd make several of the waves, especially the splitters, much more difficult.

[Frosst]

Very interesting.

As for the mobs outside the event area, I hadn't realized about the random agro thing. I don't recall it happening the final time we did it, which I think was the only time the guild did Vulak in the post-permapac era. I think event could probably be done without aggroing them, but permapac would definitely have been nice to keep that risk to a minimum.

Good point about breaking up the waves. Trying to duo some of the waves, like the 3 flurry drake wave, at the normal spot would require some serious (if not superhuman) mental focus. At least one person would need to precisely coordinate a variation on his/her slowing/debuffing/healing/nuking, across two tanks, while keeping them alive. I just tried to wargame it out in my head and, it'd be tough. Would be a lot easier with a trio of boxers.

Good stuff. This thread makes me miss Al'Kabor.

[Bragon]

What bijaz meant to say is: he never got to learn Project illusion and really really regret he didn't.

[Judah]

Never did get a Guise of the Deceiver on Judah...or any character since 1999. Not sure that I ever will now.

[Utdaan]

Never did get a Guise of the Deceiver on Judah...or any character since 1999. Not sure that I ever will now.

You can get a Guise on EQPC through the casino.

[Tyrionn]

I didn't box trak, or a number of encounters I should have nutted up and done. Didn't learn to play the bard and pulling tricks quite yet. Didn't get to play in Time phases 3+ as much as I'd have liked like I did on PC. Didn't get Gnomestomper plvl'd to do shakerpaging. Didn't do any tradeskills despite having shears. Not enough time playing with you guys!

[Slouch]

I didn't box trak, or a number of encounters I should have nutted up and done. Didn't learn to play the bard and pulling tricks quite yet. Didn't get to play in Time phases 3+ as much as I'd have liked like I did on PC. Didn't get Gnomestomper plvl'd to do shakerpaging. Didn't do any tradeskills despite having shears. Not enough time playing with you guys!

Yeah, I'd have liked to learn the ins and outs of FD pulling. I was a fair hand at pulling on the bard by the time I retired, but with pac, FM, tick wibbles and infinite-range line-of-sight-less insta-bellow that's maybe not saying so much. I think I would've really enjoyed pulling for raids on the SK. I'm hardly an expert on MMO mechanics these days, but pulling in EQ did seem uniquely difficult and fun.

I also camped out with banks and banks full of swag hoarded over the years. I wish I would've taken more time to make gifts of the good bits before I left, so you folks could've enjoyed it for another year or two.

Now the only regret I have is not really having a solid way to maintain the friendships made with Tems and other Alkaborians.

...

I miss you guys.

Hear hear.

[Kuron]

...I was 7-boxing all of NTOV (war, cler, dru, sham, enc, bard, rog), minus Lord Vyemm and Lady Mir....

I miss doing that with ya bro! Thanks again for all the runs you took me on there with your clone army.

[Near]

Yeah, I'd have liked to learn the ins and outs of FD pulling. I was a fair hand at pulling on the bard by the time I retired, but with pac, FM, tick wibbles and infinite-range line-of-sight-less insta-bellow that's maybe not saying so much. I think I would've really enjoyed pulling for raids on the SK. I'm hardly an expert on MMO mechanics these days, but pulling in EQ did seem uniquely difficult and fun.

I also camped out with banks and banks full of swag hoarded over the years. I wish I would've taken more time to make gifts of the good bits before I left, so you folks could've enjoyed it for another year or two.


Hear hear.

Rest assured that Nipple was put to good use many a times. Other various toons that I has shared access to were utilized as well after you left me, alone and sad on AK.

[Cabot]

I think I would've really enjoyed pulling for raids on the SK. I'm hardly an expert on MMO mechanics these days, but pulling in EQ did seem uniquely difficult and fun.

Pulling was unique and interesting in EQ. So many radii and timers and lists involved, and so many class abilities/spells, geometries, and tactics to interfere with them. I loved playing around with FD on my necro - I think even with their wimpy defense, their combination of FD, DA, gate/evac, lifetaps, pets, etc made them pretty nice pullers in all but the most brutal situations.

Of course playing with pulling on any class was interesting. I recall in some rare zones/situations I could "FD pull" with a wizard: bind yourself nearby, pull with flux stick and/or snare (and/or root some of the adds), run mobs off somewhere, self-evac to zone safe point to wipe aggro, then gate back to bind before they all wandered home and see if you can pluck one out. Relatedly, when I was camping Vile Sarnak Brew in Chardok solo, usually the first break of the area was a bit overwhelming, so I fell into a tactic of root-CC-ing everything I could and maybe killing one mob, then evac to wipe aggro and race back down (with good faction!) before all the roots break and iterate again until I had a manageable respawn cycle going.

I can't pull up a reference right now, but IIRC FD-splitting was never really intended, it just kinda happened and they kinda let it go. It was that way with many emergent properties of EQ I believe. I know quad-kiting was on that list.

This gets at the heart of one of the many important differences between early EQ and other MMO's. The other MMO's are always trying to strictly define the exact semantics of day-to-day play from the outset, and then using those design rules to implement ridiculously restrictive game mechanics that confine you within those boundaries. It seems like the EQ guys were doing things the other way around; it was more about implementing reasonable mechanics first and then just observing how it worked out in real play and then tweaking things a little as appropriate. So you got all these unexpected, undesigned interactions between the players and the world, many of which turned out to be quite interesting, and might never have occurred to a gameplay designer.

[Mangroas]

Sikkorak for President!

[Judah]

You can get a Guise on EQPC through the casino.

Yeah, but the novelty of illusion items for non-enchanters doesn't have the same flair on EQPC as it did on EQMac.

I tried EQPC...I just...can't. It's just not happening for me. Same with P99...it's just not sticking. I think I'm comfortable admitting I'm done with EQ until EQNext.

[Frosst]

I miss doing that with ya bro! Thanks again for all the runs you took me on there with your clone army.

Thanks for coming along, it was always fun hanging with you. :w00t:

Wish we could do it some more. ad:

[Lurari]

I never made it to Xegony's Rainbow.

[Bragon]

Pulling was unique and interesting in EQ. So many radii and timers and lists involved, and so many class abilities/spells, geometries, and tactics to interfere with them. I loved playing around with FD on my necro - I think even with their wimpy defense, their combination of FD, DA, gate/evac, lifetaps, pets, etc made them pretty nice pullers in all but the most brutal situations.

Of course playing with pulling on any class was interesting. I recall in some rare zones/situations I could "FD pull" with a wizard: bind yourself nearby, pull with flux stick and/or snare (and/or root some of the adds), run mobs off somewhere, self-evac to zone safe point to wipe aggro, then gate back to bind before they all wandered home and see if you can pluck one out. Relatedly, when I was camping Vile Sarnak Brew in Chardok solo, usually the first break of the area was a bit overwhelming, so I fell into a tactic of root-CC-ing everything I could and maybe killing one mob, then evac to wipe aggro and race back down (with good faction!) before all the roots break and iterate again until I had a manageable respawn cycle going.

I can't pull up a reference right now, but IIRC FD-splitting was never really intended, it just kinda happened and they kinda let it go. It was that way with many emergent properties of EQ I believe. I know quad-kiting was on that list.

This gets at the heart of one of the many important differences between early EQ and other MMO's. The other MMO's are always trying to strictly define the exact semantics of day-to-day play from the outset, and then using those design rules to implement ridiculously restrictive game mechanics that confine you within those boundaries. It seems like the EQ guys were doing things the other way around; it was more about implementing reasonable mechanics first and then just observing how it worked out in real play and then tweaking things a little as appropriate. So you got all these unexpected, undesigned interactions between the players and the world, many of which turned out to be quite interesting, and might never have occurred to a gameplay designer.

Correct. The Devs later admitted Split pulling, quad kitting, even root and bake were not intended mechanics but were left in because they added a nice dimension to the world.
Basically a lot of what made EQ great and unique happened on accident.