I wonder if this is possible? It would be fun and full of nostalgia for a lot of us. If that old "Inside a Tower Room" design is long gone. Could you at least try and find the old Music to play for us while selecting our char to log-in? note: I couldn't even find a screenshot of that old char selection on the web, so it might already be a lost cause!
The reason it's just a small box in the middle is because computers were too slow to do full screen graphics.
Just being funny, or actually serious? In general, the screen resolution was far less than. 1024x768 was the norm in 1999, and 1280x1024 was like.. you're awesome. You could always go ghetto and kick it down to 640x480. Either way, far less pixels to render. In general, I think some dev thought that UI was nifty. But... Castle Wolfenstein 3D was 1992. Doom was 1993. Descent in 1995 gave 360 degrees of freedom. In short... the computers of the time were plenty fast enough to do full screen graphics of that type, if only because the needed rendered imagery simply wasn't that big.
I'm pretty sure it is the fact. Yes, other games used full screen, etc. However, the level of graphic detail in EQ was higher than your examples. Also, EQ to this day does not use much of your graphic card, so most of what was rendered on the screen had to be handled by the processor, which in 1999 could include for some customers five year old Pentium 90s. It mainly comes down to how many mobs (mobile objects) appear on the screen at the same time. All those games you mention did not include 72 players (raid) plus some raid mobs, casting effects (to this day I type /showspelleffects off because it is too much), and more. All shown at the same time.
I have not even hit 40 yet but seeing these screen shots and remembering how awesome those graphics were makes me feel old. I would still play EQ with those graphics over these new games though. EQ pretty much ruined every game I have tried to play over the last 20 years because it isn't EQ.
You're partially correct about this. EQ was originally reduced to that window as a way to maintain frames within the engine, but it was hardly because there were any inherent limitations in 97/98. The EQ engine was never a great engine, it was just one of the first 3D MMO engines. As you know, what makes the fact of EQ's originally reduced viewport interesting is that you can replicate that even today using the viewport commands. I've experimented with this on my boxes and found it didn't really improve framerate much and the change in FOV isn't desirable, but it's an option. https://www.eqinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4180
Feel like my 3.6Ghz Celeron didn’t play the game much worse than my CPU now. I did have to buy more RAM for Luclin though , EB Games actually has ram packs bundled with Luclin. Don’t remember which expansion I got one of those fancy 32mb GPUs
Think I used a 350mhz PIII with a Riva TNT GPU for Vanilla, Kunark and Velious. Dungeons and Vanilla zones were all very smooth. But Emerald Jungle, Traks Teeth and Wakening Land with Full Clip plane - and effects must have been the ultimate stress-test for a Gamer PC at that time lol.
