For the last decade, TAKP has had AK as a touchstone. Whenever a question came up about game mechanics, we could just ask "How did it work on AK?" and go with the answer. The big exceptions were mostly made to avoid trivializing content: Perma-pac, pet pulling, Voice, Kazumi, etc. These exceptions were when the devs answered "balance" to the perennial "AKuracy vs. balance?" question. On the post-PoP server, there will be no AK touchstone. The closest thing we'll have is the Live patch history. Emulating that will make the post-PoP server era-appropriate, ish, but may not (necessarily) result in the best game balance or the most fun. So I guess I'm wondering: What are the devs thinking about this? Do you plan to adhere rigidly to the post-PoP timeline from Live, even if it means bad class balance, or a very different "feel" from the last 10 years of TAKP tradition, or a server that's just... not very fun to play on? Or do you plan to give yourselves a bit more discretion to create a post-PoP server that, while not strictly era-accurate to Live, is more balanced, more TAKP-like, or more fun?
I know you are speaking in hypotheticals, but did you play on live post PoP? It was very fun. I really can't even complain about LoY/LDoN, they were just group focused and you have to realize that. GoD was a rough spot even after it being retuned, but the raids were challenging which was great. OoW was all around pretty great. Different doesn't mean not fun, it means new experiences and challenges to me. I guess what I'm saying is that I believe it will be fun for people whichever direction they go because of the content itself.
I appreciate the interest in this, but to be honest it makes me uncomfortable to have expectations placed on it and what feels like asking for early commitments on something that we haven't done yet. I don't want to set any expectations because we might change our minds about it and that's disappointing for everyone. Rob, Elroz and myself are casually messing around with this idea of a titanium client based eqemu server, but is isn't new expansions for TAKP or anything like that. If we do make it there, it will be something different from TAKP, with a different name. We want to gate the zones the way we did on TAKP, open expansions over time so it can be played sequentially like a TLP, but just like how TAKP uses the PoP version of the game, the titanium client is the DoDH version of the game and my goal is to make it so it can work with an unmodified titanium client as much as possible. As far as trying to emulate mechanics/spells, my goal is to make it how it worked in titanium based on what I can tell from client code archeology, and for other stuff to just look at how live EQ does it because that's all we have. We're not some corporate thing with a roadmap to show investors, we're just some dudes that like to play with eqemu so this might all change, we may get bored of it before we finish, etc. The things that I don't want to do are things like arguing over whether the range on this ability is too long, or googling for patch notes and trying to put in some switch for something based on that. TAKP has been in fine tuning mode for a while and you guys who still play here are pretty hardcore compared to most, but if all we have are like the 15 hardcore players from this forum, it won't be too exciting for raiding and I think these kinds of details just don't matter to most players anyway. I personally don't think PEQ itself is playable compared to TAKP, but many people are fine with it, and THJ had many players - I guess most people are ok with it being EQish even if it doesn't work the same way as what they remember, and while I want to make everything work the best as I can, part of the fun of working on a new project is that it's not tied down that way and we can do it different if we want. Also, there's like 50 thousand things and none of us know all this stuff, we're all learning as we go and it takes time and knowing about that thing in the first place, before it can be fixed/implemented.
I personally do not care much about akurracy or whatever. In TAKP we already have a museum-quality testament to Al-Kabor, and to the care and skills of the devs and players who made it. Like your average museum though, the visitor count is low. I'm glad it exists, but I don't play. The Monks of Nitpicking Solitude can weevil away at it in peace. I did play THJ, and liked it a lot. Was it accurate? Who knows. It was fun, though. If and when you guys start cooking up something like you describe, I would be happy to give it a try and help test. EQ-ish is fine. I feel you on how much effort is involved, though.
I think with the other servers already available, at this point EQ'ish is enough. I say this mostly because of THJ. I played there and also enjoyed it a lot. Multi-classing was a really cool feature, and the synergies between different class' AA abilities was fun to play with and learn. Having 3 pets and being able to equip them with items you kept in the bank was great. I know it's blasphemy to have everything tradable, but it was great. /shrug I got to have items and abilities I'd never be able to use otherwise. I saw new zones of Everquest that I'd never seen before, because I'm not a raider and never really had the time to do anything but advance slowly, so I had no basis of "this isn't how I remember". THJ made it easy to progress through expansions, but you still had to kill mobs or quest items to do so. My girlfriend even played THJ a lot. She was totally new to EQ other than some brief time on AK, but figured out the zone maps, how to mass kill mobs to level, and how to do epic quests on her own while I was at work one day, which says a lot about THJ's playability for new players. There's definitely a place for hardcore, accurate EQ though. Sometimes it's just fun to try something different.
THJ as fun as it was, was barely EQish. Bear in mind, the more custom a server becomes, the more likely you'll be a target from the EQ IP owners. Even though they won't commit to it, I imagine in the end, the new server will mirror PC EQ live. If anything, perhaps very minor differences or none at all.
At some point, I imagine folks in the emulator community will get together and just create a new game. Something EQish enough to appeal to emu players, but distinct enough to be immune to Daybreak lawsuits. Emu devs already have all the server and mechanics know-how this would require, and I imagine generative AI tools could do a lot of the front-end client stuff (graphics etc).
There are already Monsters and Memories, that Minecraft looking EQ thing, some EQ peeps would love Pantheon (yes, its getting closer), but not a part of the EQEmu community naturally and closed source. There are options, perhaps people just don't want to pay for them.
