So I exported the faction window with /outputfile faction and got a list of 620 factions. However, when I copy/pasted the full list that's on ZAM and they have 720 factions listed. Some of them do appear to potentially be removed, but I'm unsure if maybe some of these just aren't like "attached" to my character yet because I either haven't progressed far enough, or maybe because of my race/class combination. I've compiled a list of all the discrepancies between in-game and ZAM and sort of compiled them into sections. Just curious if anyone has anymore info on these factions and if they did or didn't exist at some point. I'm also going to put whether or not ZAM has info around how to raise/lower the faction level as well. Additionally, I have two factions that are listed in my output file that just says "Unknown DB String"?? Races/Religions Agnostic - None Aviak - No Raise / Has Lower Bertoxxulous - No Raise / Has Lower Blackwater - None Cazic Thule - No Raise / Has Lower Fizzlethorp - No Raise / Has Lower Goblin (removed) - None (Only faction that is specifically mentioned to be removed.) Grel - No Raise / Has Lower Half Elf - None Human - No Raise / Has Lower Karana - No Raise / Has Lower Kedge - No Raise / Has Lower Kejekan - None Kobold - No Raise / Has Lower Lanys T`Vyl - Both Lizardman - No Raise / Has Lower Mermaid - No Raise / Has Lower Minotaur - None Ogre - No Raise / Has Lower Orc - No Raise / Has Lower Prexuz - No Raise / Has Lower Rallos Zek - No Raise / Has Lower Rodcet Nife - No Raise / Has Lower Seru Race - No Raise / Has Lower Vampire - No Raise / Has Lower Veeshan - Both Werewolf - No Raise / Has Lower Specific "Factions" Apparitions of Fear - Both Besieged Ry`Gorr Clan Snow Orcs - No Raise / Has Lower Clan Darkpaw - Quest Specific? Clan Grikbar - Both Combine Empire - Both Creatures of Darkhollow - No Raise / Has Lower Creatures of Gloomingdeep - No Raise / Has Lower Creatures of Taelosia - Both Critters of Jaggedpine - No Raise / Has Lower Cult of the Arisen - None Damsel of Decay's Denizens - No Raise / Has Lower Dark Sendings - No Raise / Has Lower Darkvine Brownies - No Raise / Has Lower Defenders of the Broodlands - No Raise / Has Lower Denizens of Discord - No Raise / Has Lower Guardians of the Dark Tower - Both High Hold Citizens - No Raise / Has Lower Inhabitants of Sky - No Raise / Has Lower Jewel of Atiiki Efreetis - None Keepers of the Claw - No Raise / Has Lower Kerra of Barren Coast - Listed twice but w/o the ID signifiers like others. Kobolds of Gloomingdeep - No Raise / Has Lower Kunark Fire Giants - Has Raise / No Lower (Comments say have been removed.) Legion of Rage - Both Lesser Brann Giants - No Raise / Has Lower Lesser Jord Giants - No Raise / Has Lower Lesser Vann Giants - No Raise / Has Lower Lesser Vind Giants - No Raise / Has Lower Minions of Mischief - No Raise / Has Lower New Alliance of Stone - None Newbie Monster - No Raise / Has Lower Oracle of Marud - Both Orcakar Players - None Pixies of Faydwer - Listed twice but w/o the ID signifiers like others. Residents of Karanas - None Root of Innuruuk - None S.H.I.P. Workshop Base Population - Has Raise / No Lower (Only faction that is explicitly said to not show up in /faction window?) Sandflow - None Savage Spirit - Has Raise / No Lower Servants of the First Witness - No Raise / Has Lower Servants of the Song - No Raise / Has Lower Spirits of Lxanvom - Has Raise / No Lower Steam Factory Flunkies - No Raise / Has Lower Surefall Protected Animals - Listed thrice but w/o the ID signifiers like others. Surefall Protected Animals - Listed thrice but w/o the ID signifiers like others. The Dark Alliance - No Raise / Has Lower The Guardians - Has Raise / No Lower The Rainkeeper - Both The Sol`Dal - No Raise / Has Lower The Unearthers - None The Wall-Borne - No Raise / Has Lower Trueblood Coven - No Raise / Has Lower Specific "People" Fungus Man - None King Kazon Stormhammer - Has Raise / No Lower Queen Cristanos Thex - Both Shard's Landing Beetles of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Braxi of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Goral of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Grendlaen of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Kangon of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Oashim of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Pests of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Pumas of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Scavengers of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Selyrah of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Snakes of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Wolves of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Wyverns of Shard's Landing - No Raise / Has Lower Goblins Dirtdigger Goblins - No Raise / Has Lower Droga Goblins - Both Frostflake Goblins - No Raise / Has Lower Greenfoot Goblins - No Raise / Has Lower Nurga Goblins - No Raise / Has Lower Scorchclaw Goblins - No Raise / Has Lower Random Banker - No Raise / Has Lower Beta KOS - No Raise / Has Lower Beta Neutral - None (Comment from 2020 suggests it no longer exists). Missing From Faction Database Unknown DB String 1875-45 Unknown DB String 1876-45
I would need to look at mine. However, just a guess might be that EQ does not output the ones that it is impossible to change?
I think only those factions you can raise and/or lower for a specific purpose are in the faction window (i.e. have interactions other than just killing them). Other factions exist to allow NPCs have interactions with other NPCs as well as PCs.
I actually found the ZAM list originally from your site's page on Faction standings, so that was incredibly helpful in itself. I went through on ZAM individually and found that—at least at one point—you could alter the faction ranking of most of these listed. There's some that just have nothing listed, but interestingly, I found that a majority of them all have the ability to Lower your faction ranking, but no way to Raise it; according to ZAM. Would be really curious what your exported list looks like. Especially with regard to the two I have that are "Unknown DB String". Hmm, this could be a good path given that so many of these have a way to Lower them from ZAM, but no way to Raise it. But there's a few that have specific ways to lower and raise faction standing (ie: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/faction.html?faction=351), and they're usually tied to killing NPCs or quests. I'm also curious when these other factions existed because the "Faction Base Data" text file in the Resources folder has the same 619 IDs that are listed in the Faction Window. So if there's still 100 other Factions, where is that data stored? I wish ZAM's "Faction IDs" actually matched EQs own IDs. That would make cross referencing about a BILLION times easier.
Client side text files only contain the data needed to display in the client. It's not going to match exactly whats in the database, but the bare minimum to not have to constantly request strings. ZAM can either pull data that is discovered through the item collector through inspecting what memory the game uses, or it's manually entered from what is discovered from playing the game.
Ahhhh. Very interesting. I was under the assumption the text files were local for ease of reference for the client and would have everything, not just what's displayed. I'd still be curious to know why ZAM's IDs are different then. I can't imagine they'd set up two different ID systems in-game.
My /output faction list has 618 factions. Includes: Unknown DB String 1875-45 0 0 Unknown DB String 1876-45 0 2000 More that that I will report later, as I am raiding now.
Either beta data that has leaked out, or placeholders that were never used that were moved to the next expansion. 31^1875^ 31^1876^ 30^Night of Shadows^-1^Night of Shadows^A_NOS^27^
I know, but the way the descriptions happened on site it made it seem like they should line up. But Riou's post makes sense if things have been updated. I'm bad at counting, and by that I meant I forgot my top row in Excel was headers, so yes, I have 618 factions as well. Those two Unknowns are the same as mine. I would presume everything else would line up as well. This was actually going to be my next look-up so thanks for doing it before me.
At one time, over a decade ago, there was an SOE approved open API to obtain and parse some game data for 3rd party sites like Zam and a few others for EQ and EQ2. Prior to that all data was added in by hand by those who worked on the sites or from log file parses. The API was several years before DB was spun off as its own company. The API deteriorated, I'm not sure when that started happening as I had stepped away from the games for a bit, but several of the 3rd party sites were waning as well. I'm not sure if the waning started before DB spun off Sony when they dismantled SOE or after. There is still data from the API and parses, but not what it was before. But... one of the things I am finding in the run up to Oakwynd launch, the 'era' information wasn't really recorded much if at all until many expansion in, possibly not until the first TLP where there was a concept of returning to a semblance of the past even if the TLP version isn't identical. Some places there is an attempt to retroactively add an era tag but for most things not. Like a lot of data, though, there are things that have been shifted in the databases. In some cases, and item or whatnot (including a faction) got a 'revamp' and, while it kept the same name, was not the same thing or, presumably, in the same data base location. That could account for some of the ID number differences, too.
Back in 2016, when asked how many factions there are, Absor, EQ Developer, replied: So either that was changed (the number reduced) or there are a lot of factions that are not on the /output list.
So this is really interesting. According to a post from someone a few replies later there were only 633 listed on ZAM at the time. There are now 719 listed on ZAM, so an increase of at least 86 factions in the last 7 years. However, when looking at the IDs for factions on the faction list, the highest ID is listed as 1876; though both 1875 and 1876 are the "Unknown DB String". This would imply they are potentially future or beta factions. If we look at the reverse order of factions from the highest listed we see the following: 1874 - The Primal Spirits (NoS) 1873 - Bloodmoon Night-Orcs (TBL) 1872 - Lords of Aalishai (TBL) 1871 - Does Not Exist 1870 - Brass Phoenix Legion (TBL) 1869 - Company of the Alabaster Owl (TBL) 1868 - Brass Phoenix Brigade (TBL) 1867 - Contingent of the Alabaster Owl (TBL) 1866 - Servants of Loruella (TBL) 1865 - Servants of Mearatas (TBL) 1864 - Servants of Aalishai (TBL) 1863 - Servants of Esianti (TBL) 1862 - Denizens of Veeshan's Peak (RoS) 1861 - Does Not Exist 1860 - The Clawdigger Clan (EoK) 1859 - Majestic Centurion Alliance (EoK) 1858 - Clan Droga (EoK) 1857 - Guardians of Konikor (EoK) 1856 - Flamescale Legion (EoK) 1855 - Kar`Zok (EoK) 1854 - Empire of the Di`Zok (EoK) 1853 - Legion of the Overking (EoK) 1852 - Enemies of Tranquility (TBM) 1851 - Does Not Exist This list reveals a few things to me from a data perspective that perhaps isn't strictly true, but it's all I have to go on. First, that factions are added to the database in numeric order. They don't seem to randomly throw new factions in as an older number even if that number is potentially "available". Second, when Absor made that comment it was 3 months away from Empires of Kunark releasing. We can see that the last EoK faction that was added was ID 1860, so it stands to reason that's why Absor said "approximately 1860". Absor would've known that some of the DB entries weren't used (or are maybe just hidden?), so using the most recent ID and saying "approximately" makes the most logical sense. Third, with the advent of the Faction Window in TBL, it appears that the playerbase discovered a TON of factions they didn't otherwise know existed. As stated previously, between September 2016 and now there have been 86 factions added to ZAMs list, but we can reasonably assume that only 14 have actually been added to the game since then. (I'm not going to reverse engineer the entire 1850 remaining numbers to see if they do indeed all work numerically... well, not unless I really have to.) Lastly, I thought it odd that 1871, 1861, and 1851 didn't exist so I checked 1841, 1831, and 1821 but both 1831 and 1821 do exist so there's nothing I can really derive from this. I wonder if a dev might comment on whether or not the 619 listed in the faction window are the only "currently running" factions or if there's approximately 1250 other factions the game is also calculating that only exist for NPCs? (That would be WILD.)
They have commented, the faction window only displays those which the player interacts with or otherwise has control over changing. There's way too many factions to be querying that every time you open the window. In fact, there was one expansion in the last few years they forgot to enable for the faction window and had to patch later. The client side files only contain the data needed to build the tree for the faction window, the faction window only contain the factions that players interact with, and the outputfile mirrors what is displayed in the window. Those "missing" factions are either ones that are NPC only, or are one-way only so displaying the value is meaningless. They can individually flag which factions to show in the window and outputfile.
The id numbers you see on ZAM for factions are just auto incremented numbers when a new faction is created. The actual in game id is another field in the faction table which we store but don't publish on the site to the public, yet.
I find it interesting that this would mean there's double the amount of factions that players never see and are relegated to only being used by NPCs vs. what the player actually has any influence on. I cannot fathom a design reason whereupon you'd need that much backend work to control NPC interactions when there's so many factions already available to the player. Like, it might make sense at a 50/100 scale, but 600/1200? That feels like an insane amount of needless bloat. I wonder if a Dev would be willing to confirm the back end list of all factions the game computes. If there are indeed 1200 factions controlling NPC behavior or having one-way affects it would fascinating to try and divine a design reason for that. Ahh, that makes sense. What's interesting here is that The Primal Spirits is listed as ID 752, yet there are only 720 factions listed on the site currently. That would mean there are 32 that have been in someway removed, yes? Furthermore, with regard to ones that I listed above, is the intent to show Factions on that list beyond what is shown in the Faction Window? I'm mostly curious about ones that aren't in the Faction Window but seemingly still have ways to both raise and lower faction standing.
Not necessarily the conclusion. Factions that only go one way, factions that are not tied to any quest may not be shown as the value wouldn't need to be looked up as you can't do anything with it. But don't take that as face value, as they had to create an algorithm so they could script which factions were to be shown when the window rolled out, and they can take different design decisions afterwards going forward as to what they want shown or not.
1871, 1861, 1851 do exist, just not in the faction window As mentioned in other ones the faction window ones are just ones the devs show that you can basically raise or lower (or at least maybe care about related to other things like quests and such or general pop) There are ~2050 factions atm (the final like 160ish are PH'd)