Top 9: What PvP EverQuest has done for YOU.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by MoveFastRZ, May 19, 2017.

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  1. MoveFastRZ Bloodsaber

    I quit. Not a penny more of my money to the owners of this game. And I admit: Nobody cares why, and you can already guess it has to do with the state of the PvP game. So instead of boring you, here's my top 9 list of What PvP EverQuest has done for YOU (dear reader). Take it also as a top 9 of my favorite things that happened on the PvP servers. Followed by my final top to 9 list of PvP players.

    (Doubtless, this thread will be deleted. Save it to MS Word if you like it? In the meantime, add your own lists, of 9, or fewer, or more).

    9: White-hatted (OK, maybe black-hatted) the most egregious vulnerabilities in your GM system and server security:

    Players who deserve to be immortalized for this include Xirx, who was able to hack the Message of the Day and insert some colorful language, and who, in return for providing SOE with the security vulnerability he had exploited, was given a ranger (Xaze) in full raid gear for the era, on the condition he would not transfer the character to Zek, where nobody had obtained that gear yet. Of course, he movelogged to Zek the next day, and was banned shortly thereafter. His time on Zek was inaugurated ignominiously, by dying to a ranger whose gear included Bazaar pieces (Arkwon. See: Top 10 PvP player list below).

    Zelnik, original guild leader of <The Begotten> on Rallos Zek also merits mention. Through GM finagling and other sleight of hand, he was awarded a similarly-equipped account, this one a Shadow Knight (Gabuk), who was played for years with great proficiency by a member of Z's guild.

    Fun Links? Yes: Swamp Defense, Episode 5, where Blart and Valdiven take on some folks from the 'scary warlord guild' in question. Bonus points if you can find the part where I get killed on my enchanter.

    http://www.notacult.com/episode5.htm

    8: Got your AOE items nerfed, but not before the art of using them to kill off an entire opposing guild's raid had been perfected:

    The last great AOE item to go was the Earthshaker, Master Yael's sword that hadn't dropped in ages, but which could be paired with warrior (and to an extent, zerker) abilities for massive AOE pulls. Due to the demand for instant XP that was unlikely to be disrupted by PvP encounters, this use of the Earthshaker was among the most popular ways to get levels and AA on Zek. Zek players often went to blue servers in search of the item, where it was used in the same way, but not to the same extent. The value of the sword ballooned, and by Depths of Darkhollow the sale of 'Earthshaker pulls' had turned into one of the most lucrative ways to generate plat on Zek.

    I won't bore you with the long history of AOE abuse in its most exquisite incarnations on the PvP servers, but one anecdote deserves immortalizing: The Earthshaker wasn't much use in PvP because PvP targets--at least on PvP servers at that time--are highly mobile and the range of the item, especially when paired with the necessary warrior abilities (rampage, etc.) was limited. Only one player ever managed to make an Earthshaker cascade go off at an opportune moment in the midst of enough opposing PvP targets to cause a spectacle. That intrepid fellow was named Kerr, and he managed, in the early days of the Zek server, to creep into an opposing guild's (<Hate>) raid and one-shot the entire guild instantly.

    7: Speedd the (slightly less) Famous Bard:

    Fansy was famous for disrupting a zone. Speedd was (slightly less) famous for disrupting the entire Sullon Zek server. During an era when Ancient Mez landed unresistably in PvP, Speedd developed an utter mastery of an under-utilized PvP class, which could almost never land a kill with its limited DPS, but which could hold entire groups or guilds hostage using its bag of occasionally-buggy, sometimes-just-downright-clever tricks. Combine this with an incredible willingness to answer his guild's bat phone, and Speedd was able to delay the rest of the server's progression through the Planes of Power for months on end. Regularly, he would zone in on an opposing guild's raid, and they would begin to offer him RL$ not to disrupt their activities.

    Call his tactics cheap, but acknowledge that any other guild's bard could have tried the same thing, and many in fact did, but none with the same success. Speedd is a good candidate for the most pronounced impact on his server's progression by a single player in MMO history.

    6: Through massive multi-guild conflicts, heralded the end of the MMO era that was immersive, without handholding, then SOE killed it dead:

    The first PvP server, Rallos Zek, inherited the MMO culture that had already formed in Ultima Online, where PvP enabled servers were the default ruleset. As a result, people played on Rallos Zek not because they all wanted to kill each other, but because they had come to regard the PvP-enabled experience as the standard by which immersion was achieved. The absence of the ability to settle one's genuine differences with other players through force was regarded by these players as a highly artificial imposition of game design, and one that ruined the immersive nature of the gaming experience.

    This resulted in a server population on Rallos Zek that was something like 90 percent "Anti-PK" and 10 percent "PK" (i.e. PK = Player Killer). If you were PK, you killed everyone, outlaw style. If you were Anti-PK, you frowned on random PvP because it made the game shallow in much the same way that a hard-coded PvE ruleset would. PvP was to be used in genuine disputes. Most guilds fell at varying places along the spectrum between PK and Anti, but the majority of the server was on the Anti side.

    This resulted in extremely complicated guild politics, and the server's first multi-guild conflict (the Sabbat-Synergy war, between two raiding alliances) set the stage for its later, larger conflict, The Rebirth War, which pulled in just about every guild on the server, either into the more PK-aligned alliance headed up by Taiwanese guild <The Peacebreakers> or the more Anti-leaning alliance whose lead guild was the top raid guild of the era, <Ascending Dawn>.

    Besides being just about the most fun anyone has ever had in EverQuest, the lasting significance of The Rebirth War was the way it forced SOE to step in on the side of the less chaotic elements of a server for the first time. The Anti side of the conflict had numbers, but the PK side had the "how-do-you-kill-that-which-has-no-life" element (credit: South Park) going for it, and through committed disruption of the Anti side's raiding activities, was beginning to take a serious toll on the morale of the Antis.

    Eventually, Rallos Zek's server GM stepped in with a ruling that said PvP in raid zones counted as zone disruption, which was punishable by suspension or banning, and the war swung rapidly in the favor of the Anti alliance. People on the PK side thereafter complained that the cozy relationship between the server GM (Ozuri) and the people in Ascending Dawn had been exploited to gain the ruling that Ozuri had issued. Probably true, but all things considered, Ozuri was the best PvP GM EverQuest ever had. He liked PvP, and he liked keeping it fair.

    That was the end of PvP that occurred according to the rules that the servers themselves formed. Obviously, this kind of no-babysitting PvP was not to be seen again in subsequent MMOs, so its conclusion in EverQuest marked the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one, where you're either on a babysitted PvP server (World of Warcraft), or you're on an abandoned cesspool of a PvP server, where not even the rules that should obviously count are enforced anymore (Zek).

    5: Proved EverQuest PvP was genuinely about skill by winning cross-server PvP tournaments against vastly better-geared players:


    Many of you may recall the Best of the Best PvP tournaments, which were class-based PvP contests on each individual server, from which each server's winner went on to compete in a gamewide tournament against the winners from other servers. There was also the Test of Tactics, which was a 6 v 6 (well, 7 v 7 if you count the 'tactician' / coach for each team) version.

    By the time these rolled around, PvP server players were vastly under-geared compared to their blue server counterparts.

    Nonetheless, in the class that was most gear-dependent (Warrior), the three red servers operating at the time placed first through third: Nanak, Kamzan, Kaukaz. In the class that was second-most gear-dependent (Rogue), not only did the Rallos Zek server's competitor place 2nd (Reefman), he would have won if players weren't snared in place when fights ran long, and was even more under-geared than a large number of his counterparts from his own red server, because he had been a member of the non-raiding PK faction of the server.

    Most impressively, a team made up mostly of members of a PK guild from Rallos Zek won the game-wide/all-server Test of Tactics, despite fielding several partially-geared players, and despite the fact that their 'captain' (Ssok) was only level 57.

    Although it has been a long time since class and gear balance in EverQuest PvP has been satisfactory, these BotB and ToT victories disprove the annoyingly common claim that EverQuest simply wasn't designed for PvP. During the early era of the game, for all its warts, EverQuest PvP was about skill, and therefore richly rewarding to play.

    Fun links? Yes: Videos of the competitions in question.

    Rogue:



    Rogue 'mirror' link:



    Warrior:



    Test of Tactics:



    4: Invented League of Legends:

    Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games and co-inventor (along with that other guy and this thing called DotA) of League of Legends, was an avid PvP EverQuest player and enthusiastic member of Rebel Alliance-style guilds, including <Discordia> (to <Pandemonium>'s empire, let's say) on Tallon Zek.

    His formative experience leading to his sense of how the League of Legends ecosystem should be designed to encourage season-based, competitive, fair play style engagement between players, was EverQuest's Discord server, the permadeath PvP event server released as a promotional feature of the lead-up to the Gates of Discord launch.

    Late in the lifespan of the Discord server, members of a Rallos Zek guild (<Darkenbane>) deployed rampant 3rd-party software use to defeat the opposing 'Ogre' alliance. This cheat-to-win tactic garnered them every winning slot from the server except for one, which, when the dust settled, belonged to Trindamere, a variation in spelling from Tryndamere, which the server's name filter had--for reasons unknown--refused to give him.

    Finding a way to win with fair play amidst a server overrun by hackers convinced Marc of how rewarding it can be to play a game where fair play is genuinely possible. This was the experience he recalled most often when designing the League of Legends ecosystem which is the largest in eSports today.

    Fun links? Yes: Tryndamere still moderates the League of Legends subforum at Tallon Zek Times, a web forum for Tallon Zek server veterans.

    http://www.tallonzektimes.org/bb/index.php

    3: Invented in-game currency sales (we're sorry):

    Well, we didn't invent them, but one of our erstwhile alumni took them out of the underground and took them global / made them commercial.

    The fellow in question was Athrexx (I can't be bothered to remember how many Xs were actually in the name), Wizard winner of his server's Best of the Best, and also Brock Pierce in real life, child star of First Kid (opposite Sinbad), later caught up in various high profile dot-com bust scandals and Hollywood pedophile allegations.

    After which, he founded IGE, which was the company that single-handedly made MMO currency sales a Wal-Mart operation, as opposed to what it had been (mom and pop, so to speak).

    Although it's a fun fact to recall, I apologize to the rest of the MMO world on behalf of red servers for this abomination. If only for this, we deserve all the punishment we have since received.

    Fun links? Yes: Read this Wired article about Brock and IGE.

    https://www.wired.com/2008/11/ff-ige/

    2. Fansy the Famous Bard:

    Some of you doubtless remember the launch of the final pre-merge PvP server, Sullon Zek. Whereas other servers had level limits between PvP participants, Sullon Zek would have none once you hit level 6. Whereas other servers had rules the GMs were bound to enforce (no corpse camping, no blatant exploiting of bugs in PvP), Sullon Zek would have none. Everyone speculated that Sullon Zek was supposed to be a penal colony, a server that would attract the riff raff so the other servers wouldn't be spoiled by their continuing misbehavior. (Probably, Sullon Zek was mentioned among game management as precedent before that EQ2 prison server was launched).

    Fansy was a level 5 bard from the good team (who had the worst class availability and the fewest players and the weirdest zones) who perfected the art of training sand giants on people from the evil and neutral teams in Oasis, which was an extremely popular zone for XP at that time. He couldn't be attacked because he wasn't level 6, but he had Selo's and that was enough to inflict his carnage.

    Fansy's story is among EQ's most famous (if not its most famous outright), so you don't need the details from me (see: Fun links), but the story ends with a GM descending from the clouds and ruling that Fansy had violated a rule on the supposed No-Rules Server. An amazing outcome for a very clever troll, whose colorful wit and semi-roleplay while raining down sand giants on his opponents has been imitated by many, many internet and MMO trolls, never successfully.

    Fun links? Tons. Just Google it. For the original picture stories penned by the man himself, follow this link.

    http://www.notacult.com/fansythefamous.htm

    1. Killed the Sleeper:

    Another event in EverQuest PvP that has been written about in a number of places already, including the mainstream gaming media. You're all familiar with the Sleeper, and you're familiar with the fact that, in his authentic era, he couldn't be killed, only awakened. He was designed to be the game's unkillable ur-boss, to rampage around killing everyone near him in an event that formed an integral part of the game's ongoing lore.

    Until players on the Rallos Zek server killed him.

    On other servers, guilds would go in and wake him up for whatever reason, and you could do that, because what could the consequences really be if people were angry at you on a server where PvP wasn't enabled?

    On EverQuest, the Sleeper could be protected by means of PvP, and anyone who managed to get the right group together and wake him would be Kill-On-Sight for life. So he went unkilled.

    At the first hint that there was a credible threat of someone managing to wake him up, the server's top 3 raid guilds (<Ascending Dawn> / <Wudan> / <Magus Imperialis Magicus>) joined forces, established a rez rotation they thought would be adequate to the task, and got the job done.

    Actually, not that simple. They went to get the job done, and with the Sleeper at roughly a quarter health, SOE manually despawned the mob.

    There's plenty written about this event already, but I want to pause here and inflect the inside sentiment of the Rallos Zek/EverQuest PvP community when that happened. PvP players were usually the people who figured out how to do things first, because necessity is the mother of invention, and constantly getting crapped on in PvP is--in EQ terms--the mother of necessity. There was always this sense on PvP servers that PvP players were treated gratuitously like criminals by SOE, and punished for being good at the game. No event could have possibly made this a more durable sentiment, or make it seem more realistic, than SOE having plenty of time to observe the Rallos Zek attempt on the Sleeper and then despawn it anyway. If anyone had been hacking, Kerafyrm should have been despawned at 80 percent, not 24. If they weren't hacking, the event should have been allowed to proceed. SOE's behavior cemented the sense that PvP players had developed of being in antagonistic relationship with the game's management.

    The mob was respawned and the guilds tried again the next day, downing the Sleeper (the killshot went to a <Wudan> wizard, Trylun) and finishing an achievement that is still ranked among the most remarkable in the history of in-game MMO culture to date.

    Fun links? Tons. Like Fansy, just Google it. Trylun doesn't play EverQuest anymore, but he made some cool content in EQ Next Landmark, an example of which you can check out on YouTube here.



    MoveFast's Top 9 / favorite PvP players of all time:

    (If I got any servers of origin wrong, feel free to post corrections below. Some of these people I only played with on post-merge Zek).


    9. Sharringan (Shaman - Vallon Zek server <Ancient Dawn>)

    8. Gothie (Shadow Knight - Vallon Zek sever <Ancient Dawn>)

    7. Reefman (Rogue - Rallos Zek server <Hidden Power> and <Ascending Dawn>)

    6. Arkwon (Ranger - Sullon Zek server <Ancient Dawn>)

    5. Kamzan (Warrior - Tallon Zek server <Pandemonium>)


    4. Speedd (Bard - Sullon Zek server <Hate>)

    3. Mythd (Enchanter - Tallon Zek server <Pandemonium>)

    2. Moonfall (Ranger - Vallon Zek server <Ancient Dawn>)

    1. Ssok (Bard - Rallos Zek server <Hidden Power> and <Facultas Utrimque>)

    And a final shame-on-you for game management:

    I've seen Holly Longdale tweet about how cool it was to meet Fansy IRL. And I've seen Roshen tweet at Tryndamere about how cool it was that he ranked on the Discord server. So when you guys geek out about the red servers' best alumni, do you also inform them that since they left the game you've decided to use the entirety of EQ PvP as the game's trash disposal? Maybe next time let 'em know so they have a chance to ask you to do otherwise. I'm sure they would.
  2. Reval Augur

    That's a pretty impressive post.

    League of Legends actually has a character named Tryndamere as well. It's one of the game's earlier champions.. http://gameinfo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/champions/tryndamere/ and was extremely op when I was looking into the game *cough meleequest extension*

    I'll add that Angwe from Pandemonium went on to become a legendary force in WoW. You can google it if you want, but here's a link for the heck of it, among the sea of others out there.. http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/882449-All-hail-Angwe-the-Greatest-Wow-Player-Of-All-Time Also number one on this: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-elaborate--moves-in-online-gaming-history/ There is no shortage of easy finds on google for Angwe.

    I'm honored to have been among that group of players in Pandemonium. It was an incredible guild, and had a lot of amazing people.

    As far as pvpers go, I tried typing a list of great ones, but it was so long that it made your thread look short. I'm not getting paid be the word, so I'll leave this thread as something that isn't too long to read. I always liked the humorous side of things. I'll add that Atomo was really great if you can ever find his work, and Ziguld too. I know Fansy is the go to for that, but it really should probably be Atomo.
    Duder likes this.
  3. Sokon Augur

    I really wish they would do something with PvP cross all servers. Wouldn't it be neat to have a placeable item, like the statue of Rallos Zek in freeport that goes to destruction, but instead make it a placeable item in guil dhall, and it zones you to a cross server Arena. They could make a new zone Arena with different environment sets in it to support hiding in buildings/tunnels, open envronments and other interesting terrain types. But i think it would be a hit for everyone. Doing somehting like that really removes any type of negative effects people who don't like pvp might be trying to avoid, like disrupting what you are doing, corpse run, losing pk points etc. Remove all the negatives, even res effects after death, and I don't see why you wouldn't see many utilize it to compete.

    My biggest question is why(with the functionality that does exist) hasn't the new management decided to make a change on this? They have made quite a few nice and unexpected changes lately, pvp should get something, I bet they would be surprised by the use especially if some sort of incentive/point system was implemented. I suppose one could say, well every server has many arenas on it, and they aren't utilized much at all. That's a fair point to argue I'd say, but there is no point to it, no achievements or tracking system. Something serverwide has potential I would argue.

    Over the last months I have been perousing youtube for more pvp videos. I'm surprised by how few pvp videos there are on youtube, eq pvp could be a blast with a little tune up and functionality
  4. eqzekisdead Augur

    RIP zek. I am still waiting for the free transfers off so I can play my old characters again.

    please close it down already
    disgruntled likes this.
  5. Gidono https://everquest.allakhazam.com

    I played with Marc Merrill in the guild Indignation on Tallon Zek for years. He played a barb warrior named Tryndamere. We used to ally with the guild Discordia and the alliance was known as Disco Nation. The alliance was because Pandemonium did everything they could to keep us from doing current content by training us and corpse camping us. We had some epic battles through Velious and Luclin against Pandemonium. 200+ people in zones battling it out to the point where zones crashed. Good times.
  6. Funk Augur

    Great read and thanks for posting this. Makes me wish I had started on pvp server from day 1.
    And loved BoTB tourneys, I was a monk and got into an all class BoTB and stalemated with a paladin, neither one of us would die haha. And one of my best memories in old eq was a guildwar, those were fun as hell.
  7. Raccoo Augur

    Not exactly the same, but can't everyone /testcopy and use the arena on Test to pvp without fear of losing buffs, potions etc on their regular server? (unless they are already on Test)
  8. Chaosflux Augur


    Yep

    Afew arguments in Serverwide chats have been solved that way. Fight me bro!!!!!!1
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  9. Jetboy Lorekeeper

    Also to PvP's credit:

    My memory of the exact details may be fuzzy so correct me if you know them. But from what I've been told PvP also caused some grief (especially to the server GM) and changes to the Bazaar system back in the beginning.

    The story happens on the Rallos Zek server when the Bazaar was first introduced, the old horse-stable version of if by the Nexus/Shadowhaven zones. While technically a city zone with no PvP allowed, there was an Arena area nearby. And the rules on that server where that you got to loot your defeated opponents Plat etc...but not gear. Hence, normally everyone ran around copperless.

    So, what happened was that a certain class at the time (I think it was Enchanter but I could be wrong) had some kind of spell or item proc that caused a small knockback effect on a player even though they were not in a PvP zone. They would then go and buy ALL of the items for sale on a poor unsuspecting player in Bazaar mode, whom was afk for the night. Then use the knock-back to push that toon alllllllll the way over to the PvP Arena area nearby....kill the unaware afk toon and get all of their Plat back and then some!

    This didn't last long!
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  10. Schadenfreude Augur

    I remember this and his arrival on Zek even getting a brief mention at that year's FanFaire. Unfortunately, I no longer remember where most of the story was explained if it even still exists so all you have is the odd fragment here and there.

    I seem to remember him being banned for good after rampant GK-ing on another character not long after?
  11. Israfel Elder

    It's always interesting to see Speedd mentioned, but odd to see the name alone.

    All <Hate> bards were exceptional and dangerous. This was due to the extreme level of organization between them and how well they worked with wizard partners like Kirban and Mycen.
  12. Forcer Deathmagi Journeyman

    I agree that pvp uses more skill and necessaty than pve, especially with the fact about the sleeper. I remember rolling toons on pve and pvp. Pvp was way more INTENSE. Lolz. I remember grouping with some friends with my wiz and having a hot key bound to my nuke"You wanna smoke something smoke this" .... Ended many mobs with the nuke lol.... Awesome times
  13. Nirgon New Member

    Good post, who were you on RZ?

    Disagree with Ozuri from a good for the server from pvp standpoint, he was protecting his beleaguered CSR. We had people in AD putting their bard epics in ovens to destroy them and having mega melt downs quitting before he stepped in. I think he realized they wouldn't be able to staff and handle the amount of crying the pvp caused. Many games are realizing pvp is too much of a hassle from a CSR perspective so they just make it a side show or throw it out completely.

    Shout out to Big Kringe who wasn't on the list, and the FU guys for being the best.
  14. Xerzist Augur

    Good read, and informative as I never really dabbled into the PvP aspect of Everquest as it seemed like one of those areas where balance would be impossible.

    On the positive note, for a game this old, it sounds like you have had a lot of fun and some cool memories man. Take them for what it is, that is why most of us hold on to an older game. The feels, the pixels, and the occasional drama llama that makes a night funny. I do hope for your sake and the others who enjoy PvP to this degree get some love and needed changes.

    Best of luck :cool:
    Sharringan-Zek likes this.
  15. Sissruukk Rogue One

    Good necro job on this thread.
    Smokezz likes this.
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