VGOEmulator.net

Hi all,
I only recently discovered this project, and trying to catch up, I have read a lot of stuff on these forums and I appreciate that we are a long way off from finishing recreating the VGSOH that existed at "sunset", an admirable goal, for a game I very much loved in the many many many hours that I played it.
My question is this, is recreating VGSOH the sum total of the goal, is there a view to future development once that goal is achieved, for expanding on what Sigil achieved or is it just getting back to that point?
I would love to see future development and possible incorporation of ideas such as AA in EQ which gave you a reason to continue to adventure even when "max level".
WOW's methodology is grinding daily quests to "occupy" your time and "resetting" your character every expansion, which just feels like a mouse wheel, in EQ you could invest your time in developing a character and your gear, and it would be useful for a long time, not just until the next expansion was released.
One of the best parts of EQ and VG both imo was the community that developed among the players, investing in your relationships with other players was of great benefit, vs WOW and so many others that have LFG tools that pair you with "whomever" and you will probably never see them again.
Spending time sitting at the entrance to Old Sebilis forming a group had it's downside to be sure, but it also meant you took notice of who you grouped with, you chose to keep in contact with the good ones that played in your timezone, you had a list of friends you could call on to fill a group spot if you needed to. There were activities in game that meant you needed to get help, and in return would be needed by others to help them.
This of course is all predicated upon people having a reason to continue logging on even when they level "capped".

I never played EQ or EQ2 so I can't really make any comments on that stuff, though I believe that AA stuff was put in VG but never went live in game. This means that we might be able to do something with it. Faux probably knows more about that than I do though.

Our goal is to make VG as it was as sunset but rolling back some F2P changes (like how they made some things easier).

SOE benefited from what we call "Designed Downtime" where players are forced to wait for various reasons, either through mechanics like waiting for spawns, or through things like the KDQ quests that were once locked to once per day. Frankly, I don't appreciate having my time wasted, so we're not going to implement things like that if we can help it. If it's necessary for the event then we'll do it, but otherwise we won't.

In that regard we have talked about making some changes to things that were just unnecessary grinds such as POTA. There are a few topics here and there about some suggested changes (Like removing things like the kill 100, and putting in skill checks instead of time wasters like sitting idle on a hillside while a sorc kites some ants.)

As for the future, we have discussed added some stuff where we can. We're unable to add anything that doesn't already exist in game like dungeons or chunks, or mob/NPC models. But we can copy them and do stuff with them. I intend to implement Stirhaad (Raid Dungeon) and Garuzamut (The big chained dude at the towers in the south of Qalia). We also talked about the Cave of Wonders area that was released just before the Sunset announcement, and the Halls of Shattered Souls for T4 POTA stuff.

There's a few unused dungeons that we've found as well that I want to do something with eventually.

So yeah we do have some plans for the future. Just for now we have to get everything up and running first.

Thanks for your response Jakkal, I fully appreciate that these are long term things, and that priority has to be to get stuff running first, I just wanted to know for my own purposes if it was an even an option, I am glad to hear that you are open to further development where possible

That all sounds very promising, as a side note, EQ Alternate Advancement(introduced with the first expansion), allowed you to divert your incoming exp to a separate pool(originally equivalent to the exp needed to complete level 51) each time you earned an AA pt. You could then use these AA pts to buy permanent abilities that increased your capabilities or power, there were a lot of them and too many over the many years, but you could get small increases in run speed, stat increases, mitigation and avoidance, many aspects of your character could be advanced incrementally, also utility AA like a second bind point and increase to the duration of buffs you cast.

Especially in the later years it could have been managed better, but it allowed you to flesh out your character considerably over time.

Regarding the time wasting methodology, I couldn't agree more, like you I feel strongly about time wasters. I have no problem investing time in building a character, but just "renting" stuff until the next cycle kills it for me.

I played, and loved FFXIV for quite a while, it had a lot going for it, it wasn't vanguard, but it was probably second best in my book, a good crafting and class system overall. When I finally reached the top end where you farmed points to earn gear and did the maths, there was something like a 12 week cycle(I don't recall exactly) and the bottlenecks they had on earning the currency to get the gear meant that it was not possible(due to hard weekly limits) to get a full set of that gear before about week 10, so you were opting in to this neverending cycle of doing a lot of pickups with idiots to farm this currency to have very little time to use the gear before it was completely outdated with the next set to be released, and there was very little to do at the top end besides that, when I worked that out, it flipped a switch in my head and I pretty much stopped playing completely.

Don't put me on a mouse wheel, tell me it is a mouse wheel and then hang a flashing neon sign in full view of my mouse wheel that says "Hello Mousey, you are on a mouse wheel"!