[mmorpeegee]

So I gave this a shot recently. Been bored so been trying everything and anything that comes to mind. I tried DAOC emu which was really good but with a population of 200 ish... not really enough to be worth dedicating my life to.

I also tried an Ultima Online emu which was really good by the way! Game worked perfectly, widescreen resolution and everything, yet with all the old original gameplay and 2d graphics. Unfortunately it was just a bit too hardcore for me these days.. I ran around and nuked some sheep or something and then ran out of components so couldn't cast any more spells and that was just too much for me to deal with.

So on to P99's red server. Project 99 is known for its Everquest emulated server which is still popular, although I'm not too interested in playing the original game all over again. But I loved the PVP servers in EQ and never played them long enough to be bored of it. I played both (or all three?) of them for at least a few months in the early ish days of EQ, although I was so burned out on the game itself, I didn't stay long. At first this P99 server looked promising. It's a mostly un-tinkered version of the original EQ, including Kunark. It was lag free, I made a character and jumped right in, nice original UI or you could use the Luclin one, all seemed great, but didn't last long. The problems are:

1) It's quite buggy. For example I started in Paineel (Which is one of only a few tweaks they made to the original game) and it took me forever to get out. There is an elevator you have to click on with a key, and I clicked it several times and it never moved. Eventually I realised I needed to click it a dozen times rather than just several. Also, many of the guards don't assist you if you go to them with a mob on you.

2) The players are HORRIBLE. I know PVP players are pretty much always total little douch brats, but this server was just too extreme. First thing I saw was a guild called Holocaust... Surely I'm not being over sensitive here... but wtf? What kind of total moron calls their guild that? To think that the original servers were big about 10-13 years ago, even those in their teens at the time must be nearing 30 years old today. So that kind of behaviour is just idiotic.
And according to the players, it translates to how they play too. There is rampant exploiters and cheating, as most people are the "win-no-matter-what" types.
People also say that guild chat and forum chat and region chats are far worse than anything you see in WoW.

3) The XP rate is slooooooooooooooooow. It's like EQ was when it was first released (which I played and overcame....), but seeing it again these days, wow it really shows how far things have changed. I'm not exactly insistant on this super fast WoW style 1-70 in a month type speed... but this old EQ speed seems pretty ridiculous these days. For example you only have about 3 spells at level one, so I run around killing bats and skellys and FINALLY get to level 2. But unlike the more modern games like Vanguard, you don't get rewards in two level chunks, it was four levels back then. So I've now got two more levels to go until I get something else to play with. But level TWO felt like a serious grind. I must have killed 50 skeletons and spent about 40 minutes or so, and I was only about a third of the way in to the level. IN LEVEL TWO!! When you keep checking and see your XP bar has only moved the length of a finger nail, and it's still only level 2, you know you and the game are not meant to be together. I like that everything else is unchanged from the original but jeebus, life is too short for me to spend the next 18 months just getting to level 50.

4) Everyone is a chicken. Apparently you can wander around soloing in the commonlands, and people will see you and they instantly run away. When everyone plays entirely defensively and totally chickenlike, it doesn't make for a very exciting game. When I played all those years ago, I was constantly ambushed by people. Sometimes I lost, sometimes I managed to fight off my attackers! Either way, at least it was fun.

5) The population has plummeted down to peaks of about 60, which is pretty worthless. Although judging by the above points, it's not hard to see why.


So that's that then, swing and a miss. I would definitely try it again though if they open a new server with new rules, which apparently they are considering seeing as this one did so poorly.