Gnomish Proving Grounds (progression, minor customizations)

[gnode]

Hello all,

Just giving out some info on the Gnomish Proving Grounds.

We are a progression server, currently on Kunark but nearing Velious. We will not progress beyond PoP (I don't like the other expansions..). We will likely start VP some time next week. We are farming Trakanon now for keys.

There is various custom loot, such as ring mail and cloth having minor stats and dropping off newbie mobs, so people won't be naked. Also, most NPCs drop 2x their loot (quicker equipping). Certain pre-nerf items exist and certain items drop off original mobs (jboots, de mask, etc). Epic quests work! If there are any problems discovered, they are corrected. Many people have epics now.

Experience is fast 1-50 due to increased exp bonuses in old world exp zones. So you can catch up easy. A casual player playing a few hours a day can get 50 in a week (or weekend) and join the raiding. 2 boxing is encouraged. Max chars per ip is 4. If this starts to cause bandwidth issues, it will be reduced accordingly. You only lose half exp when you die and you respawn with your gear.

Guilds are allowed, but must allow others to play with them and generally be nice. If you think you are doing a dick move, think twice - I will see it in the logs or hear about it and there is little tolerance for it. There are two guilds on the server now, mine and another. The other are friendly, inclusive people.

I have enough bandwidth for ~75 players at peak. So far, peak numbers are 30-40 players nightly. Backups occur daily (3 AM). I am an IT professional; rest assured the server will be stable.

On a technology basis, I am committed to meet whatever the server's needs are out of pocket. Donations are not accepted at this time.

We have a forum: www.tarekfadel.com/eqemu

I am working on some custom Velious content now that will involve retaining old/classic gear (original drops, Kunark drops) to keep them relevant in the Velious era, but not to overpower Velious items. This concept will likely carry over to future expansions.

If you like EQ up to PoP, please join us!

[kegluas]

ive been playing here for a few weeks and it rly is a lot of fun.

[gnode]

First Veeshan's Peak raid is now scheduled for next weekend. We have ~24+ keyed people now.

[gnode]

Bump still going strong. Now that the Thanksgiving break is done we are resuming our normal raiding schedule.

We have farmed Trak a lot and are just finishing up some VP keys. Once Phara Dar is down I will release velious.

If you are looking for a classicish progression server with minor customizations for an authentic feel, this is the place for you. There is a big exp bonus in classic exp zones so 1-50 should only take a couple nights.

[gnode]

Oh yes, I did add one big customization to Velious now but it will not throw off any balance.

I added a quest that involves old armor to update it to still be relevant in Velious, but not overpower Velious armors. It involves stealing some treasure for gnomish pirates and your old armor.....

[VoodooChild]

came back to EQ after a few years off, definitely liking the server setup and the fact it won't go past PoP- I agree about not liking the expansions after that. Good idea with the extra newb loot and whatnot.

One question, did you open more of Velious now? I happened to see someone link RyGorr Battlemail last night

[partylwc]

opened iceclad and eastern wastes

[gnode]

Server is still going strong. I noticed some other servers at our level are no longer in the market place...

I keep seeing new people every day.

[gnode]

Update:

I spent some time this week making Plane of Mischief a good zone. I added back in the necessary 1.0 npcs and drops to make the class armors work. I also added in some 1.0 loot (ie, blam stick). I also made the drops more tolerable. It will still take you quite some time to get everything you want here, but you won't slit your wrists like on live.

I also added the nexus as a hub. There is a buffer that will buff low level spells (ie, celerity, clarity 1, chloro, etc) and a soul binder, and general supplies merchant (backpacks, food, gnomish hover-board).

[Almost Crimes]

This server looks interesting but I get a lot of lag / crashing during zoning, which I don't get on the other servers... :(

Might just be me though, not trying to talk shit about your server bro.

[gnode]

This server looks interesting but I get a lot of lag / crashing during zoning, which I don't get on the other servers... :(

Might just be me though, not trying to talk shit about your server bro.

Hmmm that is too bad. Do you notice any patterns about when that is? I have not heard other complaints.











Little update on the server. We now typically have 25-40 players on all the time. Several people have epics now.

[gnode]

We cleared VP and Velious is completely released now.

We usually have 30-45 players on at all times now. Get in while the gettin is good.

[Redik]

I 2nd that

[Silentrath]

I don't see the server in the server list??? hrmm kinda strange

[Redik]

Yeah I noticed that too.. anyone have any idea where its at

[Redik]

Server population sure is healthy right now, was 50 on when I logged on today.

[gnode]

Yup population has been great. So great in fact I was forced to move up to a newer version of eqemu to help keep things stable with more players.

Status update: We are pretty far in to Velious now. The remaining feats that need to be accomplished are kill all 4 warders (killed Tuk last night) and Vulaak (rest of ntov has been cleared).

I won't let Luclin come out for at least 1 month from now since I really like Velious. I think it is the best part of the game. In one month or when Vulak and the remaining warders have been killed (whichever comes last) we will move on to Luclin.


I also put in place a cap of 3 characters per IP to make room for more players. Bandwidth should support ~60-75 connections so I want to be sure that boxing does not keep new people from being able to play. If you have a special requirement such as room mates/family, send me a pm here or on our board and I will work with you.

Fiber will be in my area some time in the spring. I plan to upgrade to that ASAP. In my area, anywhere from 2mb - 20mb up should be possible. I will take whatever the max is that is still economical. I have already upgraded the memory in the machine, and as always, remain committed to any upgrades that are needed as we grow.

[gnode]

Server update definitely fixed stability problems. Doing NToV right now with 40 people in the raid and 50 people online:
http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u319/gnode_photos/EQ000002.jpg

[XanatosNemos]

GM abuses power and plays favorites here, banned me cause his friends thought i got too much loot on raids

[porigromus]

Any proof of this? Not to be rude but making a statement against someone's credibility should require proof that it happened other than your word.

[gnode]

Any proof of this? Not to be rude but making a statement against someone's credibility should require proof that it happened other than your word.

He is the 2nd person I have had to ban in nearly a year.

We have a simple loot policy. We roll on loot, but you can't be a loot whore. He would continue to roll time after time. After winning several items on a raid he would continue to roll on loot. This was brought up to him by me and others. He even thought it funny to make his last name "Lootwhore"

I had numerous complaints from people about him. After pruning him, I got nothing but thanks from the population.

I regret having to ban people, but sometimes (rarely) it is necessary. His personality was just not a good fit. We are just not the right server for him.

[germish]

Hey guys Malicious/Soothe here. Just thought I'd say hello. Haven't met you yet Tiny, but looking forward to a raid or two.

I've raided with the gang in ToV, but it is just about impossible to down Vulak. I'm not sure if I was there for 80% of the raid, but it was great fun.

Keep up the good work Tiny, and thanks for bringing EQ back!:grin:

[KingMort]

lol , you gnome you can't make npc's that look like players and count them as players


If you want to act serious.. play on Raid Addicts

King

[liquest]

haha advertising your server on another servers topic, lol niiiice

[Traul]

lol , you gnome you can't make npc's that look like players and count them as players


If you want to act serious.. play on Raid Addicts

King

You're an idiot.

[germish]

Traul is right...
One thing is to come in here and throw a hissy fit.
Just because you cried about what ever you are upset* about, I personally don't want to join your lame server. :cool:

[lostpeanut00]

GM abuses power and plays favorites here, banned me cause his friends thought i got too much loot on raids

I don't play on this server anymore, but I did for the first two expansions. Other than maybe summoning people to raids without asking first *cough* :D, Tiny runs a very clean server, and I have a lot of respect for him.

I might not have agreed with the first people he banned, but it sounds like it was warranted in this case. Loot policy is general knowledge on his server, they are very clear on that. Its designed specifically to be fair for everyone.

[newlich]

I have to say I have had more fun playing eq on this server then I have in anything Everquest related in the last 8 years ish.

It is a total blast with a great population. Grinding is not difficult leaving a lot of time to just explore, quest, camp and just help others get stuff done.

I've had a blast and will continue to be a part of this server till Tiny turns the lights off.

Sosk
Fyres
Tyke

[newlich]

/bump.

Luclin is almost fully open. We need three more raid wins in Velious to open it up completely.

For a fun environment check us out :).

[MarglarTZ]

old thread - we've progressed into ssra and are working on emp keys. it's a bit of a process. the vt key will be simplified without requiring the shard camping.

we are still running velious raids and kunark raids at random, helping folks with things and gearing up new players (ntov is like candy land for them).

I think one thing that discourages folks is that they start in the arean and don't know what to do.

you can use #peqzone once every 20 mins to zone whereever - blow your first one to nexus, and ask the giant gnome for a trinket. the leveling rate is super quick, you can catch up easy. lots of friendly folks here to help out as well. aa's are pretty normal speed.

you can box up to 4 toons but we prefer more people over more boxed toons. raids usually max out in the mid 20s so don't be surprised if you can't bring an army everywhere : P

if you have any questions, I'm in game pretty often as Koii and Marglar.

[SuperFunTime]

GoD was awful at it's inception. Uqua and Ikkinz 4 were fairly big cock-blocks.

Altho we enjoyed GoD on the whole later as a source of 2 x 3 box loot for our bots funnily enough.

Omens was awesome in that it offered PoTime/EP gear from tough group events, so you no longer had to sacrifice your life to get some decent loot, if you were a decent but casual player.

DoN had amazing group content that I really enjoyed and it succeeded where LDoN woefully failed. Amount of points to get items was less troublesome, you trade crystals for PP too and sellback items for 66% of the crystals. Along with the great selection of weapon proc augs, charms and even a WR bag.

It lacked a little on the raid side, but then we 2 x 3 boxed Rikky and that other dragon in the same zone later to get bot loot. My friend Joks even figured out a way to beat Yar Lir later on.

DoDh wasn't bad either for group content, a wide selection of rewards to be had, some a little random and crap, but the wolf mask quest gave an item that could last a long time. DoDh raiding was awful though, I'll give you that. DP was a slow raid which it took ages to gear up from.

PoR, short and sucky in many ways not a real exp, but again, a great source of loot in many places for the boxer.

And then it all went horribly wrong in TSS where loot mudflated ridiculously and the culture of having to do 3832787843 quests outside of raiding to progress was instituted.

So I think, not everything after PoP was so bad when played in the right context. I really did love DoN for grouping, since it was everything LDoN should of been. Probably the biggest reason lots of people say PoP+ sucks is because GoD was a level 70 expansion put out to a level 65 player base and a lot of people quit right there and then for WoW.

[Asleepdan]

Anyone else experiencing constant crashes just minutes after loading and zoning in?

I keep getting an error saying my display adapter atikmdag has failed but recovered on its own

[LizardNest]

If I joined this server would I be able to raid with you guys or some other pretty good guild on the server? It sounds like a lot of fun from the comments I've read and it seems super easy to catch up since there's an increased leveling xp.

[gnode]

If I joined this server would I be able to raid with you guys or some other pretty good guild on the server? It sounds like a lot of fun from the comments I've read and it seems super easy to catch up since there's an increased leveling xp.

Sorry for the late response. If you are not already playing, the answer is yes. It only takes a day or two to get in the 50s and you are welcome to join the guild and raid.

[rudeboy2]

Hiya! I've never been to this server, but am always looking for a good legit server to try out from time to time and was wondering: what's the size of raids on this server?

[Redik]

Whats the status on this server? Pretty sure I had a couple chars on here... but that was many months ago

[everlastnmn]

Currently, this server has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Constant 50+ people online. We are currently in Luclin raiding Vex Thal atm. We have killed everything except Shei for Luclin.

There are 2 guilds on the server. LEET SAUCE and HOOAC and both are very friendly. We have had new members join 2 weeks ago that are up and raiding with us getting VT gear. We still actively do NToV for Vulak, AOW, SSRA bosses, VT, etc.

Right now, almost everyone 4 boxes. As the population grows we'll probably be cutting it down to 2-3. Currently in LEET SAUCE, we raid 20-30 everynight and some people more than others.

We're not DKP so loots are very fair.

The GM TINY has said that we will not progress past POP (I'm still asking to go 2 expansions past POP) and there will be a reset once we reach that point.

Tavian
60 Warlord
Seven
60 Cleric
Nocturnal
60 Rogue
Ssosk
60 Shaman

[gnode]

Quick update

We are in PoP now progressing strongly. Today we pulled off: AD, TT, Grummus, Carpin, Bertox in one afternoon with ~18 people. Everyone did a great job.



We have a new GM to help me out. He and I go way back. Short is also an IT professional and an experienced scripter and experienced EQer. He and I used to invent new exploits back on live....

He has created a lot of new fun content. Here is a video he made about a halfling brawl in the arena of seru. They make you drunk during the fight!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov-l1FKtgbA

Also lots of new filler gear and fun minor revamps. Fight living boats that were a tinkering experiment gone wrong, etc...








Regarding reset, we will see how it looks at the end of pop. Don't worry about it for now.

[RUSHER]

My group is hoping for a reset around winter break. We really enjoyed playing on GPG last year and would love to start from the beggining again.

[Ansley1]

My group is hoping for a reset around winter break. We really enjoyed playing on GPG last year and would love to start from the beggining again.

Me Too! Luclin+ is just too yucky

[RUSHER]

Actually I like PoP, a lot of the encounters and scripts are legit. But there is just something about starting from the beginning that's really refreshing. I didn't liker post PoP content that much but that was just my preference.

[gnode]

We still have the rest of pop to do.

We have been raping flagging content pretty well. Due to the challenges of getting everyone on at the same time and hassles of backflagging, we are going to make a special NPC. When a flag event has been killed 2 times reliably, we are going to let people hail an NPC in pok for the backflag. This means that new players would be able to join and catch up their flags quickly without being left out or causing us to have to back flag.

[liquest]

i woud love toplay on your server iused to on a druid named mongo but i use sof clien now

[bowmaster]

is 65 max level then?
if Pop progression is happening

and how hard is it to get the spells?

[gnomeshaped]

is 65 max level then?
if Pop progression is happening

and how hard is it to get the spells?

Yes 65 is the max level right now.

PoK and Abysmal Sea are both open for getting spells, and parchments for 61/64 spells drop pretty regularly.


As for the SoF client I'll looking into what it would take to upgrade to .8 with minimal effort.

-Short GPG Gm

[bowmaster]

can you Maybe 2box , Maybe 3box alot on the server?
beacuse im from UK , so usualy its rough times for me to raid

Espically since im 16 + go college so , I need be at college 9am 3times a week

[gnomeshaped]

can you Maybe 2box , Maybe 3box alot on the server?
beacuse im from UK , so usualy its rough times for me to raid

Espically since im 16 + go college so , I need be at college 9am 3times a week

The limit is 4 characters at once.

[bowmaster]

Yeahh a know th a, so 3box is fine,,

Whats the most i can do really?

[nightsta69]

The limit is 4 characters at once.

according to this message, the limit is 4. /shrug

[madhatta317]

Gnomish proving grounds is no longer on the green preferred list, what happened!?

[gnomeshaped]

Low population for awhile. Most of our regulars are on break or switched to the SoF client, which we are working getting the server up to .8 to accommodate them.

No worries, we'll earn it back. .8 will allow us to do a whole lot more, and fix a lot of the little issues we've been running into.

[madhatta317]

It better get the population back up because ive been playing on this server for about a week now its definitely the best server ive played on yet, i love it. Gives a good old days feel, while levelling up a little bit faster to endgame and raiding. I recommend this server to everyone

[szalab]

Please keep us updated on the SoF compatibility status!

Damn I wish I would have ordered Titanium instead....

[gnomeshaped]

Please keep us updated on the SoF compatibility status!

Damn I wish I would have ordered Titanium instead....

Soon =)

And that is a real world Soon, not the Soon soe would give people when they knew it would never get done.

SoF is the future, in the end you'll be much happier with that client.

-Short

[gnode]

Bump

We are on .8 now.

All customizations intact.

We still need to kill Saryrn, RZTW, Solro, and Agnarr to get in to the elementals. The rest is on our flagbot in the nexus since they are on farm status.

[gnomeshaped]

Is anyone having connection issues? I've seen a few regulars pop on, but that's it.

[everlastnmn]

Server is working amazing on .8 SoF client. Short and Tiny did a fabulous job with the switch over !

Anybody that wants to start - the time is now. The exp has been increased and geting to 65 will take maybe 2-4 days depending on your playtime. Gear is easy with everything up to POP on farm status (VT, AOW, NToV, SSRA, etc)

If you need help leveling, don't hesitate to ask me. People have different things they want to attain in EQ. Some love the leveling - I don't. I just want to raid :)

Levels are easy to catch up, gear is easy to catch up - we have a bot in the Nexus that catches you up on flags we have killed 2 times and on farm status.

Now is the time to join before the push into Elementals. Give it a try, I guarantee this server will be fun for you. Nothing against the other servers, but when you are handed everything you want (epics, top level gear dropping off level 30 mobs, 10x aa) it's fun for a week, maybe even 2. If you want a server you will enjoy playing on for months and have the old raid feeling of EQ, Gnomish Proving Grounds is the server for you.

If you have any questions, log on and send me a tell or /ooc.

Tavian
65 Warrior

Seven
65 Cleric

Nocturnal
65 Rogue

Beld
65 Rogue

Talon
65 Shaman

[Thegreatwent]

Update: We've recently trounced Sol Ro, Rallos Zek, and Agnarr earning our way into the Elemental Planes. Most everything is fully functional and many mobs in PoFire are on farm status.

This is a great server with many dedicated individuals helping to create a fun environment conducive to leveling and raiding. Exp is increased to allow new players to level up reasonably quickly to join in raiding with minimal time investment. Custom mobs, events, and zones have been made to fill in gear gaps. The Nexus has a spell scribe which gives you all spells up to level 60, a newbie gear vendor, and a buffer. Porting around is easy with the implementation of the #peqzone command. Boxing is recommended but solo'ing is certainly welcomed.

If you're looking for a legit feel with minor customizations to relieve some of the tedium from the game, GPG is $$. We're swiftly pushing our way into the Plane of Time so get started before it's too late!

[Ryoz]

Bump! Need more to help us clear the elemental planes and gods!

[Ansley1]

I'm still hoping and waiting for a reset.

[Ansley1]

http://i768.photobucket.com/albums/xx330/michaelcate/EQ000002.jpg

[Ryoz]

This may have been mentioned, but since the original post wasn't updated, our current website is http://gnomishpg.com/ (http://gnomishpg.com/phpBB3/)

[madhatta317]

It looks like GPG is back? I see it on the server list and its starting to look like its getting popular again. Is there a website? Is it back at classic and progresing again?