Everquest MMORPG- Recreated into a Wc3 MORPG

The Massive Multiplayer Online RPG Everquest has been on my mind for some time after cancelling my subscription. I am starting a project to recreate the everquest world with a hero-saving 512x512 epic sized map to recreate the entire world of EverQuest, and realistically create every monster/unit in the process. I am guessing it will winish in 1-2 years depending on team size and dedication, but it'll be fairly straightforward. The only problem is to get it within B.net filesize maximums with the high size, triggers, ai's models, and skins.

A look into the world of EverQuest:

The Classes:
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/bard.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/beastlord.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/cleric.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/druid.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/enchanter.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/magician.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/monk.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/necromancer.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/paladin.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/ranger.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/rogue.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/shadowknight.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/shaman.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/warrior.asp
http://eq.crgaming.com/menu/wizard.asp

The Races: These will decite what items you can use, what classes you can be, your stats, and your faction with other races.

http://www.everquestplatinum.net/races/

The World: Here is a small map of the world; There are many dungeons, planes, etc on it too, and some of the areas are unused in game and are optional for recreation. It takes approx 3 days to walk across it, but there are druid and wizard teleport spells to aid you.

Note: this is an old map, and does not show the moon on it, but it will be implimented.



The Monsters: They will vary in strength; weaker monsters will be soloable, but later on, they will take an entire party to fel more than one. Monsters will go up to near level 400-500 where heros can go up to 80.
http://eq.crgaming.com/data/monsters.asp

Spells and Abilities: As you progress in levels, you can spend sums of gold to buy and upgrade abilities and spells, such as Dual Wielding and masteries of different weapons. If you buy a "root" spell, and then buy another version of it, wether it is stronger or weaker, you will replace the old spell. You can also get tomes of retraining.

Faction: Some races will have different alliances with others to start with. Certain quests, and creep kills will raise or lower factions with different people. Say, for instance, if you are a High Elf, with no faction changes, you will be Killed on Site at a dark-elf city, and vice versa.

Inventories: I will have to combine the arms and pauldrons with the chest armor, for the sake of having enough equip slots. You will also have a bank in every town, allowing you to keep 40 extra items. Essentials such as food and water will be kept in a seperate secluded area in the terrain when used, etc. I also am combining leggings and boots, and maybe gloves to chest to free up some inventory.

Items: I will be implimenting many of the items found here:

http://eq.crgaming.com/data/items.asp

which is just a slice of the peerless inventory you can equipt. I will include randomly-selected items from every level range, and class range, and add some/fix stats. I will also add "Epic" items, which are items that obnly your class can use, that require much time anddedication, and a good party to complete. I plan the epics to be incredibly rare.

Parties: All in a party will share EXP and gold gained from kills, and will generally disperse items around based on what class they are. Each full game will have up to two parties of six.

Cheating: healing+buffing lower levels so they can gain exp at an alarming rate, a communly used tactic I plan on eliminating. I will also use a system to remove duping similar to CoT2.2's system.

Much More...: I am barely breaking the surface of how in-depth i plan this to be!

What I Will need: Dedicated and skilled workers, who can produce fairly well (I'm not demanding, but I wanna see work done.) and a lot of them. I will be needing many people to finish this; this is not your average project! You will also need to be very conservative of filesizes.

Terrainers: I will need about three terrainers who can work as a team to make their terrains match; not too complicated but very detailed. I may skin some custom terrains from this basing them off of samples from EQ itself (I can't even cnp that if i wanted; it wouldnt fit wc3)

Experienced AI Editors: I will need some spells including the Necromancer's "fear" and ai-controlled summonables and all custom AI's for creeps giving them each an attitude of their own, and strategy as a team.

Modellers: I will be needing custom models (duh) for this. I am looking for detailed models that don't necessarily have a high polycount so they can all fit, but normal poly is okay, I just would prefer low. (not necessarily your best, just to show you can model.) UV unwrapping is required unless one of the skinners offers to.

Skinners: People who can work productively and fast with custom models, and maybe some blizzard ones. I will need samples of your work (not necessarily your best, just to show you can skin.)

Spell Editors: I will require several laborous, but not tough spells to be made, but there will be several spells that will require extensive slk/trigger edits.

Triggerers: This will be a tough job; You will need to recreate and create quests that are not boring, and will need to do all the required trigger works, minus spells. Ai's will cover creeps though.

People who play EQ: Since I am no longer a member till my bday right before june or possibly summer if I crash my grades, I will need people who can take some landscape/terrain screenshots, character screenshots (just a new char, find some random zone you dont use, make a new char, screenie it a bit then delete) and news on updates that will affect gameplay. I will also need some views of the moon; I've only been there twice.. If i can not find EQ people, ill post at an eq forum for them.

Much thanks to CastersRealm ( eq.crgaming.com , or other titles..)
much thanks to Sony Online Entertainment for their excellent game: EverQuest ( http://everquest.station.sony.com/ )

Reply if interested.

heres the promotional sig.

without the spaces.

just noticed this belongs in the b.net section.. >.< please move it and delete this last post i made when you did.!

If I were you, I would divide this project into continents, because the actual EQ world is *Huge* and even if you use a 512x512 map things might get squished or left out. If you did a 512x512 of each continent say (well not Odus) you could fit a lot more in.

You could make it so that there are actually different maps and you can just load your character into a map you haven't played. So for example.

Odus and Faydwer could be one map (since they are the smaller ones.) and you can start certain races there. Meanwhile Antonica is another map and that is where the other races start. Then if a gnome or an Erudite wanted to goto Antonica, they could just load up that map and load their character. (they would need to be released at the same time and be fully compatible for that to work)

You could then add new maps (Kunark, Velious, Luclin) as you go and release new versions of the old ones so that Iksar or Vah Shir could goto the old world.

Also a problem that may arise is with the inventory and the saving of characters over Bnet. A saved character can only carry 6 items, and EQ being a MMORPG has many items, so you may need to create mules to carry items over to new maps... but this could lead to players having to type in those large passwords numerous times, just to load their character and all it's items to a new map :(.

I am sure you could get around it, but it's just something to ponder.

The whole project would take a lot of work, but you seem to know that already. Well, best of luck, hope you see it through :D

Good idea, i'd just have to have someone retrigger it again... then again whats saving triggers for?

Im thinking odus antonica and fadwer (original ones) first, release kunark and vel, then moon and planes/etc! Beaises, I plan people to level at the same rate as the real one, which is a long time, so people wont need those islands until later.!

I appreciate the idea too, I also heard you can save more than just one unit... I can make the bank several buildings able to carry 6 items, like the main build on the spellcrafters map thing.

okay, i got the attack system down, works exacly like eq's..

I changed hold position hotkey to a, and if u press hold, it attacks selected unit, if nothings selected, ignore it, etc.. I feel so proud!

can hero cashes save between different maps? Maybe i could do one map each island afterall

You wouldn't need to do the loading externally. Just have portals on each map to whatever adjacent lands (maps) that can be travelled, and set it up to load the relevant map. This would also enforce real travel.

Isn't this restricted to single player though?

yeah, I really wanted this to fit into multi, but if it doesnt, ill find some AI making guru to make ai's for other heros to be your party... Then I could have more than 12 anyways :D

Hi i was wondering i fi could help?

what skills can you offer?

oh oops forgot...i can make items...srry thats all i can do right now but im trying to learn more...

I sent you a pm I can terrain (ask whitehorn how good i am) I also skin pretty good.



contact: [email protected]

alright, kewl!

heres what I have for the attack system/etc. The backpack will also fly higher and have its own model.. Im just lazy, too many WE crashes, hehe

Here it is:

Thanks draco for the camera triggers, I just changed the angle, next thing im making it a bit smoother, and take off the fast-turning.

Soon im gonna take the default buttons off, other than move.

sent u a pm with a bit more info.

i'm not sure where your planing on puting the backpack but I say we actually make a bank in each town where peoples backpacks are at.

Ok I decided to make this little pice of art for our team ofcorse the bottom text is just an example. Tell me what I should put there.

Looks great! I guess ill be able to help make, but not test it, my tft cd snapped in half in my cd drive, and after taking it apart, I can only use ROC for some time, but i still have the TFT workd editor >:D

I think ill make backpack modell-less, because the hero can use only 6 items, so people wudnt bother banking things.

the backpack just instant teleports onto the units head every 0.08 seconds, flys over it, so to get to it, you just click over the unit ;)


we can use the "diablo 2 items" type backpack, but modified to not use that inv.

a slightly less annoying backpack model, better?