In the early days of EQ, a cheater and designer waged a secret war from a San Diego gaming store From PCGamer today https://www.pcgamer.com/in-the-earl...d-a-secret-war-from-a-san-diego-gaming-store/
Yes, this was a very interesting article. Thank you for some inside, little known information about original EQ development. How the guys met, where they went etc.
"maxing people's combat skills by exploiting duels with charmed pets, and no shortage of other shenanigans were hotfixed by the watchful developers. " LOL. 2 decades later and that still works.
Yes, i read this earlier this morning. Great read. My roommate was a Druid and got on to that Tumpy Tonic train like 2 weeks before the big nerf. I was clueless just how amazing it was, but man he sure was leveling a lot faster than my Warrior who seem to play nonstop and died a lot in Cazic Thule dungeon. (the old level 30 version).
No reason, just amused that the article was like "It got fixed fast" and yet... still perfectly valid.
"Eventually David found himself on the other side of the screen. In 2017, he joined Amazon Game Studios and worked on New World as a senior game designer and product management lead up through the MMO's launch. More than 15 years after his shenanigans at Game Empire, he needed to fortify his project against the kinds of attacks he was once famous for." I found this part funny, considering the game breaking exploits it launched with. For those unaware, in the time around launch they had a gold dupe issue, an invincibility bug, and opposing teams mass reporting the other team leaders to get them auto-suspended just to name a few. I did find the article interesting though. Thanks for sharing it.
Yeah he clearly didn't learn much from EQ but then the tonics quest wasn't much of an exploit. Guess he missed out on the akanon alliance days.
I still use mage swarm pets (the babies, not the gargoyle) to quickly max out newly-PL'd alts dodge, block, parry, riposte, defense. It only takes about 2 uses. Ironically you need to be grouped, with the mage's merc out, because the lowbie's own merc won't heal them in a duel. But the merc of the mage they are dueling, will. Strange.
Magicians are very loving, caring individuals. Not strange at all that they would want to ensure your low level toon doesn't die to their swarm pets. Might be tough love- beat you down, then bring you back up- but it is love nevertheless. And that love extends to our mercs too.
It's been years since I tried, but another way is gathering a massive amount of mobs and hitting the character with DA.
Check out https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFl_3ktLNPYUeicLmhSvB1Q . The host of this youtube channel was a former EQ dev and interviews others who worked on EQ in the early days. For EQ fans its a gold mine of info like how there was a bug in the early days where skunks in Butcherblock Mnts. were charming players and sending them at other players, as well as solving many mysteries in Eq.
Sounds fun. I made a necromancer and called it Greaterdarkbone and waited for players to pass me while sitting in skelly form in kelethin. I would stand up and chase them when they came close and did a /shout message. ( I made it a PVP player so red name ). It was fun!
