Back to the past

Nekrha · Post by **Nekrha** » Sun 15 Jan, 2012 11:26 am

Can't ever escape EQ and with the increasing garbage heap that is the current version I got myself an iMac and started up on the Al'Kabor server that has been locked into the PoP expansion for the last 8 years.

This really is fun stuff. Difficult as hell and very few bells and whistles.

Remember corpse runs? Makes you think twice about dying.
No maps.
Can't see shit at night with non-ultravision race.
Gear? No handy candy Defiant stuff. Any old rag with some awful stats is the bees knees. Heck my SK is still mostly naked.

It's everything EQ used to be. Quite a shock, but the challenge is worth it all. There are bugs since the server was locked off about Oct 2003.

The population is low and it's reasonably quiet at nights. Not many in our timezone. A few Aussies floating around. Having said that the people are really helpful and will buff and twink you if you want to go that way.

I'm 3 boxing SK, SHM and MAG. Got a decent 1HS and an FBSS to help me out, but apart from that and some PP for spells, all toons are basically naked, only wearing what we can get to drop. All about lvl 13 atm, so starting to get to the point where I need to find those armour drops.

There is a new test binary for the Intel iMac and it's working very nicely. Hobart, the EQ dev for the Mac version has been given the go ahead from SOE to do some work on it and SOE saying it intends to keep the Mac version going (but can we ever believe them?). Some bugs are being attended to now, so things will get better, but it's unlikely the server will ever expand past PoP.

Warts and all, it's still a heap of fun and I'm having a blast. Boxing is dead simple on the iMac and frankly as a Mac newb, I'm finding the whole environment way, way better than Windows (Win7 is ok, but still inferior).

If anyone ever ventures out this way, /join alliance ingame and give a yell. EQMac.com forums are a valuable source of top eq and mac info too.

Saburo · Post by **Saburo** » Sun 15 Jan, 2012 11:48 am

Planes of Power was pretty much the last really fun expansion. From there on they started pushing ever higher gear ratios etc. It was also the turning point for "discovering lost lands" all of a sudden these lost lands/rips in time are everywhere... Honestly just fix old content up and make it rougher instead of constantly pushing out new things.

There are some reasonably good EQEmulator servers out there. It's not especially hard to get a copy of the EQ client that they require (torrents are everywhere).

For people really chasing that classic feel Project 1999 (P1999) is simply the best experience for that. It's EQ as it was in the hey day.

Cyph · Post by **Cyph** » Sun 15 Jan, 2012 6:01 pm

P1999 was great fun, but the community are asshats, pardon the french. At higher levels you have heaps of ks'ers, spawn campers, cheaters and all round twits. None of this at lower levels though. Plus, the population isn't the best either.

I've thought about EQ Mac, knowing it is locked at PoP but...
a) I don't have a mac nor do I really want to buy one... anyway around this?
b) what is the population like, rough estimate?

I have high hopes for EQ Classic, but who knows when that will go live.

Saburo · Post by **Saburo** » Sun 15 Jan, 2012 6:45 pm

Cyph wrote:b) what is the population like, rough estimate?

pithy wrote:The Al'Kabor population is actually pretty decent, though top-heavy. If I had to guess, I'd say during peak hours on a weeknight (I'm in NY too, so I'm talking maybe 7-12 EST), you might catch 300 +/- 50 characters online. During off hours, that number might get down to 50 ish, mostly concentrated in the 60-65 range. I definitely soloed a fair amount when I was leveling up (or rather, duoed with my two-box druid), but I also hooked up with a solid crew of 4 other people in my level range and had some fun adventures. Exploring the Tower of Frozen Shadow with a full group of gnoobs is still one of my fondest Al'Kabor memories

This was from EQMac.com forums. Here it is. This was in February of 2011 so somewhatish recent.

Cyph wrote:I have high hopes for EQ Classic, but who knows when that will go live.

What exactly are you referring to here? Sony has stated outright they have no intentions of rolling a "classic" server. The closest they have come is to create the 2 time unlocked servers (Fippy Darkpaw and some other). These unlock an expansion every year or so, or once the community as a whole votes unanimously for it if it's sooner than the time progression.

There is however an EQ Emulator server called EQ Classic which has been live for a long time. You can find them here.

varutia · Post by **varutia** » Sun 15 Jan, 2012 10:28 pm

To be honest PoP was a major cluster fuck relating the flagging at begining before they add the 85/15 rule. This is particularly true if your guild got a lot of casuals and will be forced to run same event over and over again.

Cyph · Post by **Cyph** » Sun 15 Jan, 2012 11:04 pm

Yeah I was referring to http://www.eqclassic.org/

But that isn't online, they haven't got that up and running yet. Are you thinking about the EQEmu?

Saburo · Post by **Saburo** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 8:50 am

Cyph wrote:Yeah I was referring to http://www.eqclassic.org/

But that isn't online, they haven't got that up and running yet. Are you thinking about the EQEmu?

You're right I misread an announcement.

Cyph · Post by **Cyph** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 9:49 am

I'm thinking about joining Nekrha. I'm dying for some old school EQ fun, nothing else at the moment will scratch that itch. Just need to figure out how to get it to run (either buying a cheap iMac or dual booting my PC). Then to source a copy of EQ for the mac....

Post by **Thoraf** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 10:05 am

Enjoy that. but I've been there.. done the hell levels and ain't buying a mac

If you get it running in a mac emulator or dual boot let me know though, I woudln't play but am interested in how you go

Saburo · Post by **Saburo** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 10:47 am

Apparently Mac OS does not support a PC's architecture, it can however run emulated.

That means if you have a decent enough PC you could run the Mac OS and then from inside there install and run Mac EQ.

Cyph · Post by **Cyph** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 11:32 am

Any idea how EQ would work via this method? Did a quick google and couldn't find anything.

Saburo · Post by **Saburo** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 12:01 pm

Cyph wrote:Any idea how EQ would work via this method? Did a quick google and couldn't find anything.

I assume roughly the same as any normal emulator. I use a Windows 98 emulator to run some old software that requires it.

Typically you install the emulator software. This creates an emulated version of the OS. You then load (run) the emulated OS and then it operates as if it is a real OS. You install the program from within this emulated OS environment, EQ in this case. Then whenever you want to run the program you simply load the emulated OS and then the program (EQ).

varutia · Post by **varutia** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 2:07 pm

If you are that desperate to play EQ, just go on fippy server, it is not original EQ, but close enough and you don't have to deal with a lot of issues that all the emulated ones gives.

The mac server probably has the exact same issue if not worse relating to low level population as the normal servers.

Cyph · Post by **Cyph** » Mon 16 Jan, 2012 3:31 pm

Looking at the populating levels of P1999, it's fairly high around the high 600s. So, I'm thinking of rerolling on there, maybe get a old EQ mate involved and see how it goes. If I get hooked, I may just resub on live.

Cyph · Post by **Cyph** » Thu 19 Jan, 2012 3:08 pm

I've been playing on P1999 and it's pretty fun! Plenty of people (although the number during Australian night time is mid 100s, peak is high 600s), haven't met a jerk yet (although I'm sure they are lurking) and have had heaps of help getting started. I would recommend people here jump on, just to see what it is all about

Melodionxxx · Post by **Melodionxxx** » Tue 31 Jan, 2012 8:06 am

I use MacOS in a VM at work for playing with XCode when I'm really bored, it works well. Xcode is such a pile of sh*t =) Actually using Mac OS is like going back in time 10 years. Bleh

There are hundreds of sites detailing how, e.g.:
http://www.sysprobs.com/install-and-run ... lled-image

NOTE: This is completely naughty and you are officially a dirty pirating scoundrel if you do it! Use at own risk =)

MeloxXx

varutia · Post by **varutia** » Tue 31 Jan, 2012 9:14 am

Al'Kabor is closing down, so everybody hop back on EQ, we need more people

Nekrha · Post by **Nekrha** » Tue 31 Jan, 2012 10:15 am

varutia wrote:Al'Kabor is closing down, so everybody hop back on EQ, we need more people

Shafted by SOE yet again.

PC version going free to play.

EQ had all the goodness sucked out and is finally going down the toilet.

I'm not committing to this game if they keep on making these sorts of decisions without any player consultation or reasons.

Cyph · Post by **Cyph** » Tue 31 Jan, 2012 5:50 pm

P99... it ain't that bad...

Adun · Post by **Adun** » Fri 03 Feb, 2012 11:45 am

You can get the Nostalgia of old EQ from private stuff. I had a really awful memory of playing EQ ten years ago. Lots of time wasted on grinding and questing that took forever and some were never completed.

As the new expansions came and went, the decade old quests were long forgotten or stuff deleted because the rewards for incomplete quests were outdated.

I remember the old days of EQ and sometimes zoom through the old zones just to hear the music and see what's left of the non-revamped scenery.

But you can do that on private EQ servers. They have all the old zones and no revamps except for a totally different storyline.

Adun · Post by **Adun** » Fri 03 Feb, 2012 11:45 am

You can get the Nostalgia of old EQ from private stuff. I had a really awful memory of playing EQ ten years ago. Lots of time wasted on grinding and questing that took forever and some were never completed.

As the new expansions came and went, the decade old quests were long forgotten or stuff deleted because the rewards for incomplete quests were outdated.

I remember the old days of EQ and sometimes zoom through the old zones just to hear the music and see what's left of the non-revamped scenery.

But you can do that on private EQ servers. They have all the old zones and no revamps except for a totally different storyline.

varutia · Post by **varutia** » Fri 03 Feb, 2012 1:01 pm

Most of old world zones stayed more or less the same through out the years with a few exception. There are some exceptions, I really hate the new freeport for one example.

The main problem with old world EQ is that there just isn't anybody around anymore.

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