Freedom Server (New server)
 

I just opened up a new server on a new dedicated server I purchased. I have an increased regeneration and exp rate setup and so far im planning on allowing it to be used more or less like a sandbox... I have #zone, #level, #summonitem and #searchitem enabled for all. Is there any kind of demand for a server like this?

I hope to provide some buffing npc's in specific areas, and some other custom changes, but for the mos part, I want to keep it true to the EQ world. What I could really use is a load test, and maybe some feedback to make sure people are able to connect :) I'm planning on running some static zones as well, mike the strarting cities, and some of the more favorite zones.

Any questions can be sent to me at haywards6@verizon.net and I will be doing everything I can to make sure its open 24/7 with a nightly backup.

How much did you purchase it for? $1.05? I hear that's the going rate on freedom.

In any case, yeah, there's a demand for servers like that. And who knows, you might wind up tinkering with it and decide to make it something a little more involved on your part. I know that was the case for me. Good luck!

[QUOTE=So_1337;152989]How much did you purchase it for? $1.05? I hear that's the going rate on freedom.
QUOTE]

I'm not sure what you meant by that statement... I bought a server "Hardware" and put the emulator on it to run around the clock, I didn't buy a database from anyone. Is there already a server named Freedom running? If that's the case I can change the server name. I just want to make sure I understand whay you're talking about here.

I see a lot of servers, but I don't know how many are up all the time.

I don't think he was talking about your hardware/software. I think he was making a joke about freedom being cheap.

Forgive me. It was a Team America reference (a film by the same gentlemen who do South Park and a few other projects). They usually do songs, one of which goes along the lines of "Freedom isn't free, it costs folks you and me. And if you don't chip in your buck oh five, who will?"

Didn't intend to hijack, just thought I'd slip in a little joke and wish you luck =)

LOL, I love that song! Haven't heard it in a while though. When he said "Buck O' Five", I always just thought of it as 105%, so I didn't even make the connection with your comment lol.

Not to derail the thread any further, I wanted to mention that it sounds like you are running the server from your house. When you said "dedicated server", I think most people think you are talking about paying for a data-center hosted server. No biggie, but I figured I would mention it. I was wondering how you were paying hundreds per month just to have a non-legit server lol. Didn't realize until you mentioned buying the hardware that it is probably your home PC that you are dedicating as a server.

That's the main reason I put up "A work in progress". And seeing as how there are nearly 4000 individual characters in the database since I put it up a little more than a year ago, I would say others like the idea also.

Unfortunately, everything else is taking up a lot of my time, so I haven't really been able to put much effort into updating & furthering the server, which is probably also why the max number of people I've seen logged in at once was around 10. There's also not a large amount of retention, meaning once players get to a certain point (mainly with PoP flagging), then end up going to another server or something else altogether.

One thing I would recommend to make the experience easier on those new to the server would be merchants with starting gear, that way you don't have to spend an hour finding good items to use.

In any case, I wish you the best of luck with the server, and if you have any questions about running a non-legit, feel free to ask :)

Sounds like you're making a Krusher's Semi-Legit server 2.0! Yea, there's demand for a server like that. Krusher's was really popular back in the day until he had to take the server down. If you need help with some of the programming parts of it I can help out. I was one of the head dev's on Krusher's for a few months. Wish I still had the quests I implemented on there though...got a new computer and now I don't have the files anymore.

Lan... I can get you the files. The reason i took the server down was problems with the code in as i could'nt run multi zone servers. I still have all the data and quests so PM me and i will give you access to DL the quests. I am working on getting the server back up later this summer.

Krusher...

hmmm, I probably could use some help. Aside from a little knowledge about writting quests and some database work, I wasn't really planning on making too many changes. My big issue with live EQ is speed of combat, so I hope to make some minor tweaks to min/max damage and probably going through the stats on all pets. I know people get bored with it when they are max level and get all the gear they want, but I was hoping to plan some sceduled zone pops and things like that. Maybe add some really cool click effect items that don't imbalance anything, but add a level of fun.

[QUOTE=AndMetal;153038]
One thing I would recommend to make the experience easier on those new to the server would be merchants with starting gear, that way you don't have to spend an hour finding good items to use.

QUOTE]

I like this a lot! I hate going through and looking up gear also :( It's not so bad as a GM since you can just go to CSHOME and get all the pretty GM stuff. I'll probably just start the players out with a certain amount of plat and then make the items cost a little bit. I was also thinking about making everyone start in the same zone, maybe PoK to help keep everyone close by and maybe add a common zone teleporter and a translocate PoK stone... just ideas, its tough trying to make a less populated game feel more populated. NPC buffers will help with that as well.

It's a spare computer I put together just for this reason, and it's dedicated to running this server only. I hope to make good use of it by running some static zones, and hopefully a good number of players. Mostly it's just a sandbox and I hope people will check it out and enjoy themselves. I've been leveling up a Necro on it to test, and it's going quite well.

server still called freedom or has changed?

I took it down untill I get that figured out... I think there may be a server with that name already. I'm also doing some quick changes to pets in the npc table. I'm doing the basic update that will update HP and min/max damage... Once I have that completed I'll bring it back up and leave it up.

That'd be great Krusher, thanks. If you get the server back up and running, definitely let me know. I have nothing else to do this summer, the last day at my summer job is next week since football two-a-days start back up so I'll have plenty of time for scripting! I still wanna finish that 4 mini-boss/1 big boss scripted event in plane of time I was working on.

Server is online, if anyone could please try and connect it would be appreciated. I need to work out the kinks in this network.

Thank you

I like a A work in progress so I just may need to give this a checkout.

I brought the server back online this morning after doing some quick maintenence. I can't tell how everyone is doing, but it looks like I have 12 new characters that have logged on... I just accesed the pc and saw that Zone had crashed, and I've never seen that before. I'll be taking a look at the logs later tonight to see what happened.

Thank you,

Things are going pretty smoothly so far. The server came down last night because I forgot I had automatic updates on and it rebooted :( got that fixed. I had to move max level back to 70 and it will probably stay there a while since thats not my main focus. I have done a little work on necro pets, and I'll be testing those changes out before touching the other pet classes. I also did an overall critical chance upgrade across the board, with warrior types and Berserker's having a greater chance to crit. If I get some time this weekend (I have company over) I hope to get a few merchants setup in POK with some starting gear and maybe some quests for unique items.

Let me know if you need any assistance, we're up to almost 30 characters now :)

Sayin Silverwolf

I took the server down last night to make some changes to the database. I'll probably be putting it back up tonight after I have that work done. There are so many changes going in that I didn't want anyone playing on it untill it was done... I'm adding some venders and buff bots to the PoK main bank so we can have some good gear with less effort, and make solo play a little easier. I'm also going to add a translocator and a quest guy that will hand out special gear after you complete his quests.

The first big opening night taught me some valuable lessons... One thing was the zone server only being set to 5 and none of us could zone :) I cranked the available zones up to 100 and I even added 25 Static zones (All the starting cities). I haven't seen a great deal of payback on running them static though, the speed that the emulator is able to open up a new zone and use it is impressive! I'll probably change some of the hot spots to static so it feels more real.

Thanks a lot to everyone that's been playing, and I appologize for the down time today. We have over 50 characters from around 30 acounts now, and it's been great seeing you all on there.

I had to shut the server down :( I was getting way to many crashes after the level roll back. I'll be running it in test at home for a while to get the kinks worked out. I'll likely be putting the server back out there but with some restrictions on items and levels :( I think the problems were from characters having items they probably shouldn't have, or the emulator didn't understand. I know I recieved a report from two people that their item icon looked like neclaces...

I'm working on some merchants and buff bots that should help people out by offering free levels and equipment, but the actual level command and summon command will have to be removed.

Just a thought, have you added anything to the database and possibly skipped ID #s in the database? I know when I was adding NPCs for a quest on Krusher's server I skipped a number in the NPC database by accident and it sent the entire server screwy for a few minutes until I realized what I did.

Again, just a thought.

I think you're right... I did have some issues with some new spawns. For now I've wiped the server and have put the commands back on, from now on I'll be backing up the character tables so we wont hopefully need a wipe again. I still have some plans to add stuff, but im going to hold off for a couple weeks.

players will have access to the following commands
#heal
#mana
#zone
#goto
#level (max is 65)
#setallskills
#setaapts
#findspell
#scribespells
#itemsearch
#summonitem

Is your server up? I dont see it on the list.

Yep we're online. Just took it down for a minute to make some adjustments.

Is there any chance you can add in the #zone command at all? Thats the only thing missing that would have been nice!

Yeah, I missed that last night :( i'll make the change now

Thanks bro.

I did a stupid thing, and fell in western wastes, and died. There was some guy on there last night who ported me to get there, but wasnt there to get my body when I died.

I'll get it tonight.

Do you have an email addy I can email you at, at all? I have a few questions I'd like to ask you and not fill up this forum full of questions.

On a quick note. When I zoned into POK last night, and haild the NPCS, none of them responded. I went into POJ, and none of the tribunal guys would respond either.

Why play on a server with default content that we've all played 100 times before where you don't have to earn levels or equipment?

Thats simple... you don't have to. Now get the hell out of my thread.

To Rabbi dan-

Why even complain? Some people enjoy walking around being able to kill stuff on their own, or with a friend so you dont need 50 people on at once. it is fun for us and just leave it at that. I can log in tonight, play for an hour, and get done what would take 3 days to do with a guild.

Obviously it wasn't a simple question because you didn't have an answer for it. I just don't see the draw, and I don't know why people throw up servers that they've put zero effort into (like the majority of the servers). Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way though!

hayward-check your pms please. :)

You don't have to understand though, it's ok to have different opinions. I still play on live, and I like the ability to explore a zone on the emulator first to get a feel for what it's like. There are many reasons to play on a server like this.

Feel free to put your own effort into your own server if you aren't liking the variety you're finding. This is all what you make of it.

On the NPCs not responding, he probably hasn't filled in any of the quest files for them. It's been a while, but I believe most NPCs on the emulator (depending which database you're using) don't come with all of their original quest scripts and what not. It could be something else, but that's probably one of the more likely answers. I'd wait for one of the more knowledgeable people's opinions though. I don't have THAT much experience with the emulator.


Like what Hayward and Krebulax said, one of the reasons people enjoy these servers is for the simple fact that you don't need a raid of 72 people to take down some of the harder bosses.

And, excuse me, but running a server, even one like what Hayward is running, is not a "zero-effort" job. I worked on Krusher's for a few months and it's a lot of work if you're dedicated to it; especially if you're adding in new content such as quests, items, events, custom NPCs and whatnot. It adds up pretty quick and if you're not careful it can be a pretty time consuming project depending on how good you are at coding and how many tiny typos you make in your code. Try running a server of your own like the one Hayward is running, update the content and work out some of the bugs involved in it, and then come back and say if it's a zero-effort job.

I just pulled the #level command and created an npc in PoK that will level you to 65, increase your skills, and scribe spells. I'll be adding merchants and some special quests sometime this weekend.

Armor and Weapon merchants have been added in PoK at the main bank. I split the venders up by armor type (Cloth, Chain, Leather, Plate) and there's a Weapon merchant that sells all the Epic 1.0 weapons (By sell, I mean they give them away)

I also have a special quest npc there that I hope to start using by this weekend. My plan is to have that npc request a specific item (Thats why summoning will be going away) she may give some hints... but for the most part I want your knowledge of eq lore to help you track down the item or npc that drops it. The rewards for completing her quests will be great! and she should have a new quest each week.


I'm not ready to pull the #summonitem command yet, but I will be soon.

It was pretty good seeing some people playing last night. I saw someone two boxing in Veksar and paid them a visit and then I saw the best thing you can see on a non-legit server... I saw a level 6 Gnome Pally in Kurns Tower actually playing the game :) He was of course outfitted far beyong what he should have, but he was enjoying some good old leveling.

Kreb and I woke the Sleeper for fun and it was amazing watching that! It's been reset, maybe some day we'll get a group together and really pull it off.

For new players, I have enabled Glooming Deep and have been leveling my own mage in there, I love that zone. If you talk to the Exit guy "Arias" he'll send you to your starting city. I haven't removed #Zone yet, but it's coming soon. I have a translocator in PoK and I think I'll give everyone an item that will take them to PoK, but beyond that I don't want free zoning and the explouts that go with it. I'm also planning on doing some special merchant work... we're all wearing the same armor :)

Ok, a little update :)

We're up to over 200 accounts created now, and although we're not as busy as some servers, its stable and the people playing seem to be enjoying themselves; I just made some changes across the board to pets. I have double their HP and Damage to help bring them inline with what I feel they should be on a low population server. Please let me know how its working out for you.

I also wanted to give a brief comment about items and zoning so you're not surprised when you log in. Everyone starts in Toutorialb. Wen you're ready you can move to your starting city, and when you get to POK theres a leveler waiting for you there. There are merchants selling epics and level 65 gear and a translocator that will also give you an itm that allows you to gate back to pok. I'll be removing the zone command soon, but it wont really be needed anyways :)

Looking forward to seeing you!