Looking for(or willing to work on creating): Live-like, Progression, INSTANCED raids
 

'm not interested in getting rid of quality of life enhancements(like the map...). I'm looking for a progression server that starts in classic, but has raids instanced. If there isn't a server like this, how many folks can I interest in something like it?

If you build it, they will come. That is really the only way to tell what your population would be. Also, with Akka's instancing system this concept would be a breeze depending on how instanced you want things to be.

How about progression based arenas one of which you could fill the outside of it with like every mob in PEQ DB as game as like non aggro spectators that despawn outside and respawn inside the arena as aggro based challengers.

You could even use different arena's for different types of themes FFA/Gladiatorial challenges/Survival they could be basically just directly connected to towns and disabled unneeded zone lines screw it doesn't have to be pretty fun is all that matters and arena's tend to be fun in general. Hey at least you can then get rid of maps w/o giving a damn haha and corpse runs are ez enough though I'd disable that since who wants the aggravation of looting their corpses.

I'm only half serious though lol, but I wouldn't doubt if people checked it out if someone actually did it as it's rather intriguing and different KSing Pking team work betrayal friendly fire everything you hate and love combined in one crappy circle of love hate relationship.

Making instanced raid zones shouldn't be difficult at all if you wanted to go that route. You could have a quest NPC that ports you to a unique instance and most of that work has already been done a few times.

I need a host and I'll build it in a few days.

The testing I've done with instanced raids actually checks for groupid/raidid and active instance (hidden npc outside zoneline) and automatically ports them to the zone.

I'd have to re-code this as I've lost all available hosting at work/home due to bandwidth restrictions.

Raid instancing is quite simple, you can just a quest global-based system that can be used as lockout timers to keep people from constantly farming raids. You could also have invite functionality if you wanted.

I sense a player fed up with the nonsense happening on Ragefire and Lockjaw. :)

Haha, yeah, do you guys like poop socks?

I just sold out on Ragefire.

Thanks TL for the $2,800 you made me.

<3

Seriously, who wants to host a server and I'll work on it with ya.

Ideally, if I went this route, I'd also like to... reinvision some things. Not much per se, but I'd expand the sol ro armor sets so every class gets a full set, then move/rename the quests/armor pieces in two areas:

Temple of Sol Ro and Temple of Prexus. I'd divide up the class armor sets between these two. Putting 'good' class armor quests in ToP, leaving 'evil' in ToSR, dividing the 'neutral' classes between the two. I was thinking ToP could be build on Erud's Xing, making the zone worthwhile for a change ;p

I'd also open up class/race/deity combos, but leave some restricted partially(i.e. restrict SKs to evil/neutral deity only, restrict paladin to good/neutral only). With racial stat weighting, while some jackoff will probably roll around on an Ogre paladin of mithaniel, it isn't optimal with ogre's wisdom stat. (Edit: Could restrict evil races to evil/neutral deities, good races to good/neutral deities, leave neutral races open to all deities). I'm not sure how much coding this is going to require, but I'd like to see it happen. Some things never made sense to me: like half elves can't be SKs, but they could be half-tier'dal.... Or why can't I be an SK of Veeshan, I can see the wurmqueen granting powers to somebody to keep the cattle in line....

As for the instancing, I was thinking along the lines of the dz system they added in Gates. For some of the zones this will be fairly simple: Planes, when you enter it spawns the dz, for others it'll require finagling: Naggy and Vox are going to require just the boss area to be instanced, while leaving the regular zone available to xp/farm. (Edit: I realized that this may make planar armor sets more difficult to acquire so either drop rates would have to be tweaked, or mini-named would need a static loot table of 2-3 random for a specific slot, appropriate to the zone)

Future-wise, I'd like to see Freeport remain unchanged with Prophecy of Ro release, and keep 'lateral progression' post-PoR by deleveling some later things. I found that 4 expansions at level 70 was, in many ways, one of the best periods in EQ history, so I would tune the next 4 expansions post-PoR(that'd be: TSS, TBS, SoF, SOD?) level 75.

I'd also drop mercs in from the get-go, people have a love/hate relationship with them, but I'd rather have them in(but not allowed in raid content) than have people stop logging in because their class can't solo well.

As to hosting: I'll probably be able to set up a small server around christmas-time, but before then... Assuming a development time frame that lasts until December, and a locked server with only developers having access, I could just host the server on my old laptop during development phase. Unless somebody else has a better solution?

To me Vah always should have been evil always hunting, prowling, pouncing, camping, and plotting to kill or steal or kill steal and eat.

Readjusting the level tuning on expansions beyond GoD is a solid enough idea and straight forward enough to fix basically create a new insert/replace SQL file to edit NPC levels for anything above GoD level difficulty lower to match it.

It's still going to be a love/hate client relationship in area's however which is probably a big part of why no one has bothered with it outside of the fact the other zones provide tons of content.

Frankly I'd rather see people utilize night/day spawns for zones Classic through GoD and insert level tuned versions of those expansion mobs into the zones for alternate spawns. I made DB spawn doubles for the other classic continents awhile back Faydwer and Odus. So you could all ready sort of do some of that type of thing really with that SQL file.

You know with that Kithicor time of day spawning schema you could literally fit all of Kunark and Velious within Antonica basically though that zone doesn't have much wiggle room to fit all the cold/ice themed Velious mob types overly well you basically have 3 zones of that type Halas/Everfrost/Permafrost one of which is a town though could be converted to work as a zone instead. Obviously you'd be alternating day/night cycles of mobs, but it's a reasonable way to add more mobs to a zone for more variety to mob types, loot, quests, and even stuff like pathing changes in a lot of ways Kithicor is one of the most unique and interesting zones they ever designed I still remember how terrifying that zone felt like early game to sneak through to get certain races to Freeport made your heart race from the suspense of it in a good way.

I do like that day/night spawning idea. Perhaps, keeping it 'in-tune' with the 'live' classic spawns, it'd still be doable to day/night spawn... everywhere. Although it's a lot of extra work.... Could be something like: newbie zones: normal mob range daytime. +5 levels undead nioghttime. Etc.

Kunark and velious mobs could then 'invade' antonica/odus during set cycle hours, not necessarily night-time, and later on luclin mobs could invade zones with spires in them.

One of the thoughts I had for.. 'fixing' eq, was to make pok accessible only via the nexus and ports - keeping that sense of a large world that once made eq grand.

Exactly the sort of thing I was thinking with level range variations or even double spawns rather than single spawns which increases need for CC and split pulling capabilities and you can have variety of that for both night or day and doesn't have to strictly all happen at once it could be gradual and different spawn by spawn basis though initially might mostly be done that way and tweaked more as time goes on to allow further development. You could also use it to create town struggles take two spawn types aligned to attack each other with it. It's a very versatile variable to play off of in many ways for different purposes.

Here's a link to SQL file I did to double SQL DB tables they have their own unused ID's for spawns which I ensured would be rather future proof virtually indefinitely of Faydwer/Odus from EQ Classic. My intentions was to also do Antonica as well, but it's a ample amount of DB work for one person I didn't see a big enough reason to continue at the time. It didn't garner a ton of attention despite the possibilities of being a great basis for a radical amount of added versatility.

I also left room in the spawn ID tables intentionally to increase it further to triple the spawns for almost like a survival mode walking dead type of server possibility that's heavily group/raid focused.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Y...BCeUlrV1E/view

I provisioned a VM to host.

Luckily, our fiber line is back.

Been doing some work today on it.

Will post it on server discussion when I add in druid teleporters.

This could be used as like a base point idea to enable weak/normal/strong versions with 25%/50%/25% drop rate chances on items by expanding upon rare mob loot tables.
http://wiki.uosecondage.com/Item_ID

It's not so much that it's needed, but it is a potential way to enable players to enjoy the content that is there for longer periods and ease their way through it a bit more fluidly while lessening the dependance on servers needs for boxing/botting in order to do instead you'd have a avenue to farm locations longer, but be more rewarded for it overall and I think the real bread and butter of the game is the solo and group content while raiding is sometimes more challenging and can be fun it also can be more tedious to synchronize.