[EQ] Cheaters Nostalgia; EQ1's Greatest Exploits/Rumors.

[Kreugen]

I tune out 90% of what is said on Vent, because we have some major offenders in the "spew useless shit nonstop" category. We also have people who love to argue instructions during the fight. We have a pair of Mexicans that I flat out cannot understand and couple of guys who don't use headsets who sound like they are playing from a LAN party made up of apes with hammers for hands.

I run my own raid mods, with the filters set up to display only the shit I care about. Nearly everything said during a fight is redundant and too slow to matter. Every time Furor tells me to cloak something that I cloaked off five seconds ago I bash my head on the desk. If you are telling someone to react to something over vent, you are already too late.

The most useful fight for vent is heroic faction champions, because it is far from predictable. Sometimes you can warn people who are getting focused, and other times you are meleeing the target mob that refuses to come out of a pile of three others plus the hunters frost trap is snaring you and the hunter is already focusing you and then all the melee turn on you and the DK 15k crits you and then over vent you hear "kreu, move." Ha, ha. If I had a time machine I'd have totally evaded that.

Anyway, in short, it supplements the raid mods, but you'd be a better guild if everyone was able to take care of their own shit. Those mods can't play the game for you, they are useless without configuration and smart UI placement. Sadly from the screenshots out there I would say that is among the most rare of talents, so you are left with vent. As much as I bash it you really do need it to have a prayer at success in WoW.

In EQ, yes you can replace vent fairly easily just by having one guy mashing macro warnings. But I think vent would still help, because holy fuck are casual guilds bad. I mean, gouge-out-your-eyes bad. Queen Mal? Fucking impossible. Once a minute someone is told to move away from raid. They have 10 seconds to move before they are hit with an AE dot. They and anyone hit by it have 20 seconds to get cured or they spawn adds. That's it, that is the whole fight. HILARIOUS FAIL. I would say one out of three are capable of reacting to a line of text that says "you are the target." You need Vent so you can hear the leader softly weeping.

Also, since most guilds run an army of boxes and still can't fill a raid, they might not all be adept at watching scrolling chat on three screens at once. Those are the only people who have even a sliver of an excuse to miss something.

[kudos]

It's funny you mention casual guilds and Queen Mal. I know top server guilds who can't even manage to do that fight without fucking up every single time.

[Szlia]

We used Teamspeak at the time, but it was not mandatory, so it was redundant for instructions and mostly dedicated to strategic discussions and funny banters between attempts. I took almost no part in it (I had little confidence in my spoken english back then), but it was enjoyable, lively and gave a better sens of proximity with the other members of the guild, with the people behind the characters.

[Slotor]

I don't know about WoW but in eq2 Vent was very useful. Killing VS without vent would not happen. Raiding VP without vent would not happen. Now in eq2 our guild was small, only raiders with a few extra incase someone couldn't make it. This made vent manageable, including the fact that we didn't invite retards.

I play mmo's very casual these days. And everyone wants you in their vent. That's fine and everything but like others have said before me, most the shit spoken in those random vent channels are stupid shit I already know and other conversations that I have no interest in being a part of. Kinda like facebook, I could give 2fucks about what kind of mocha you had today.

If you have a good crew then vent is a big plus. But once you start inviting or joining random vent channels it's usually astronomically annoying.

[Thaxon]

Originally Posted by kudos

It's funny you mention casual guilds and Queen Mal. I know top server guilds who can't even manage to do that fight without fucking up every single time.

I love it when the word casual gets thrown around. We here seem to think 40 hrs in game a week is normal. I know I'm exaggerating, but I think you get the point.

Back to topic, I enjoy my vent time depending on who is on. But my family type guild of old friends uses it more for social purposes than exchange of info related to the game, i.e. get out the void zone moron.

[Jysin-DW]

Originally Posted by Slotor

I don't know about WoW but in eq2 Vent was very useful. Killing VS without vent would not happen. Raiding VP without vent would not happen. Now in eq2 our guild was small, only raiders with a few extra incase someone couldn't make it. This made vent manageable, including the fact that we didn't invite retards.

I play mmo's very casual these days. And everyone wants you in their vent. That's fine and everything but like others have said before me, most the shit spoken in those random vent channels are stupid shit I already know and other conversations that I have no interest in being a part of. Kinda like facebook, I could give 2fucks about what kind of mocha you had today.

If you have a good crew then vent is a big plus. But once you start inviting or joining random vent channels it's usually astronomically annoying.

I do agree, but I also understand there is a huge difference in Mods available for WoW which can make some AEs pretty damn trivial to dodge, avoid, cure, etc, whatever.

Venril Sathir was a perfect example of a fight I really cannot see happening without Vent.

[Chips]

[Goliath]

For some reason that video reminded me of the docks in West Karana where people would camp Fishbone Earring and the other barbarians. Did anyone else have rumors on their server that a mysterious/rare boat would appear at the docks and take you to a secret zone? Or that it would be the base for a future expansion? I remember going more than once to those docks at an expansion release hoping to find something new. I never read spoilers back then, so I explored everything on my own, down to figuring out how to get to Kunark/Velious (and being lost in the ocean for 30 minutes because I hopped off the boat early in Iceclad, what a nightmare that was...you were so frustrated that you were swimming for 30+ minutes missing out on early expansion craze because you were stuck in the ocean...)

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by Jysin-DW

I do agree, but I also understand there is a huge difference in Mods available for WoW which can make some AEs pretty damn trivial to dodge, avoid, cure, etc, whatever.

Venril Sathir was a perfect example of a fight I really cannot see happening without Vent.

What are you talking about? Everyone did VS without Vent/Teamspeak. It was difficult, but obviously everyone did it back then. I don't even see how Vent would help that much. Wizards were on banish, Enchanters on runes, clerics on heals, others on DPS. GG. What's so difficult about that? If Vent was needed for anything I'd say it would have helped in GoD, but still unnecessary.

Edit: Sigh, I fail. I guess you're talking about VS in EQ2. I don't acknowledge EQ2 talk.

[Heylel Teomim]

That video leaves me with a profound sense of loss. Whether it's for the amazement of a then revolutionary game like EQ, or just the desire to get all the time in my life back that I spent in what now seems so trivial, I really can't say.

[Jysin-DW]

Originally Posted by Goliath

What are you talking about? Everyone did VS without Vent/Teamspeak. It was difficult, but obviously everyone did it back then. I don't even see how Vent would help that much. Wizards were on banish, Enchanters on runes, clerics on heals, others on DPS. GG. What's so difficult about that? If Vent was needed for anything I'd say it would have helped in GoD, but still unnecessary.

Edit: Sigh, I fail. I guess you're talking about VS in EQ2. I don't acknowledge EQ2 talk.

LOL yea.. EQ1 VS was pretty much chain rune the tank and spank.

VS EQ2 was entirely different.

[Saladus]

Several things I have to note. There was a pic posted with two people in a group by the name of Sobe and Wendolyn... now while I'm sure it was probably a different server than mine, we had two by that name on Prexus. Wendolyn was a bard I helped to learn fear kiting when we were both in our mid twenties in South Karana. Just kind of funny regardless, considering I still remember names like that from years ago, and also how we took the time to help others out and it wasn't an all out race to say "FIRST TO MAX LEVEL LOLOL."

Also funny that Triality is mentioned, as a ton of my old guildmates went over to Maelin and then joined them. On the note of ventrilo, our guild had it, but only about 15 people joined it nightly for raids and like most here say, it was mainly for dicking around. Certainly had some of the funniest conversations ever there, as opposed to the whole "Raiding is serious business in ventrilo" mindset in MMOs today. I only joined it back in EQ as well because everyone who joined was very mature... like some have said here, if there was a 15 year old in there screaming then that would have been enough to completely dispel the illusion and I probably never would have joined.

Lastly, it may have been posted, but who here remembers Wyndforge's art? Here's a terrible example, as there were other great portraits with effects and stuff, but the EQ portion of the art seems to be mostly down.

[Kharza-kzad]

Originally Posted by Saladus

Wendolyn was a bard I helped to learn fear kiting when we were both in our mid twenties in South Karana.[/IMG]

Wendy was a cute little gnome rogue on our server. She ended up winning the serverwide rogue tournament sometime mid kunark. Here's a picture of her from a nag raid from back before afterlife was formed. She was 40ish and just came to watch.

[kudos]

female gnomes were one of the best models for a rogue in EQ.

[Lenas]

Originally Posted by Saladus

Lastly, it may have been posted, but who here remembers Wyndforge's art? Here's a terrible example, as there were other great portraits with effects and stuff, but the EQ portion of the art seems to be mostly down.

Funny you should mention him. I had one done a long time ago of my ranger and tried to find it earlier today, only to find his site was down. Shame, because I lost the picture on a failed hard drive a month ago =\