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Newer players may not realize in the old days you could only see the name of an item that was in your possession, or in a trade window with another player. There was no Bazaar allowing "automated" sales so players sold each other "stuff" live, usually setting up flea-market style in East Freeport or the East Commonlands tunnel to Ro, depending on server preference. Players would announce in chat what they had for sale, with a brief summary of stats. Of course, stats were less involved in those days with most gear only having one or at most two stat enhancements.

How many players remember eqprices.com? That was a site devoted to price reports of items sold in game. Of course there was no Lucy back then so prices were all reported by sellers and buyers and clearly there was rampant opportunity for falsification. But I used eqprices. I remember printing out long reports in 8pt type (tiny!) of items so I could reference it when shopping in EFP on Saryrn server. Eqprices was useful for confirming stats on items, along with allakhazam, of course.

Selling was a major part of "live" gameplay in those days since there was no way to set up an automated trader like today. This was particularly true for tradeskillers. I remember one master jeweler who used to be in EFP seemingly all the time selling his fine array of stat rings, necklaces and earrings. Diamonds, blue diamonds and black sapphires were raid drops back then so the 65hp/mana rings, 45hp/mana earrings and 65hp/mana necklaces were top of the line gear and a skilled jeweler could make a "fortune" at the time if he had access to a guild's supply of these gems and the skill to turn them into fine jewelry. But it could take as many hours to sell as it took to pharm and combine.

Once seller and buyer negotiated a price they would meet and exchange plat for item in the usual trade window. This can still occur today, of course, but with the Bazaar it happens a lot less frequently. Back then such trades happened constantly in the trade zone so this opened the door for a classic scam. The unscrupulous seller would have two items with the same graphic, one valuable, the other valueless. Say, for example, a fungi tunic and a cloth shirt. Usually the seller's price for the valuable item was well under market. The eager seller would confirm a deal, rush to the seller's location (which alone could take some effort in a crowded zone with 100s of buyers and sellers) and eagerly open a trade window with his plat. The buyer would stick the fungi tunic into the window. The buyer would confirm the name of the item and eagerly click to make the trade. The unscrupulous seller would click CANCEL, quickly apologize for hitting the "wrong" button and then reopen the trade window but this time inserting the worthless cloth shirt. The eager buyer, knowing the price was well below market and worried that the seller might have come to his senses and decided to bail on the deal, inserts his plat into the window and eagerly clicks TRADE, not bothering to re-confirm the identity of what he's buying. Deal done, the seller makes haste to log off, leaving the buyer ripped off and fuming.

Sure, GMs were more available and responsive in those days but I do remember knowing more than one player who got ripped off that way so I suspect some GMs took a "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware) approach to such skullduggery. Of course, the buyer would be sure to malign the seller's rep publicly at every opportunity. Rep is always important in an MMORPG---even today---but back then it was a VERY big deal since having a bad rep could get you shunned by guilds and groups and since leveling was such hard work, starting over again with a new toon, something easily done today, was a stiff penalty to pay for being a cheat. Sure, it was possible to pay for a name change (altho back then it required GM involvement and you had to give a reason, IIRC) and even move to another server but Sony used to maintain a web page listing all player name changes and server moves, so a bad rep could follow you, especially as some players made it their business to track such things.

Hmm... hard to believe we're still playing the "same" game, eh?







Edited, Jun 4th 2014 8:25am by Sippin

Edited, Jun 4th 2014 8:26am by Sippin

Yeah, I confused my Freeports lol! It was indeed NFP. Evils would hang out "in the sewers." I still remember the first time I made a deal via tells with an ogre player and he said to meet him "in the sewers" I was worried that somehow that could be a PVP area and I was gonna get ganked for all my hard-earned plats.

Edited, Jun 4th 2014 1:59pm by Sippin

Old thread, long thread, but a great one.

Did you know that sometime around Omens of War expac the devs started "chaining" more mobs. To any players that have come post TSS and not played the old content much you might not have really noticed it (they made this change as pretty much all newer games "chain" mobs to a spawn point so that zoneline training is unnecessary and in some cases kiting not doable in their games).

Anyways, EQ didn't overdo it so you can still kite. But in most group-aimed newer zones you lose aggro without having to retreat through the entire zone. Try this in Kunark zones... you will be chased for ever by that low level skeleton. They don't know the meaning of give up.

I did not know that. If I can ever find my smoldering brand, which has a torch image, I'd test it out.

Well that explains why I couldn't find what weapon it was, damn GM event thingies. I don't get why they didn't re-use it for other weapons, it's pretty neat looking.

There's also the Old World phenomenon where a mob would be damaged enough in a fight that it would run away. Sometimes this didn't lead to a train, especially if the mob wasn't social with most mobs in the zone. It would stay aggro'd seemingly forever and after awhile it would regen enough HPs to overcome its cowardice and 10 minutes later the mob comes back, takes a whack, gets damaged again, maybe due to DS, and runs away another time. This can sometimes lead to the runaway mob getting caught in some geometry and regenning to full health, at which point it's gone from its original spawn spot until it's killed or the server re-sets. I saw this recently in doing the druid epic for one of my alts where one of the aqua goblins (one of the PHers for the tainted goblin) in Lake Rathe was not respawning next to the underwater tower. I finally tracked him down far away stuck at the very top of one of the underwater tunnels.




Edited, Jun 16th 2014 11:56am by Sippin

Kunark was weird. In the old world, a mob would chase you from one end of North Karana to the other. In Lake of Ill Omen, the zone was seemingly subdivided into regions and if you left the region, the mob would stop chasing you. I'd hit the line and see the mob turn and start walking back. They changed to walk speed so it wasn't just wonky run pathing.

But, even if they were bored chasing you, they wouldn't ever forget you (barring Feign Death and the like). As soon as you stepped back into their region, they'd come after you again still spreading their aggro to any allied mobs they crossed. If a Sarnak had made its way back to the fort, it might take them a while to restart the hunt for you but they would... oh yes, they would.

Does anyone remember and can describe the different versions of the Bazaar over the years? The one I remember the most had one big room with "lanes" in it that reminded me of horse stalls. Players would set up their trades on these straight platforms. The entrance was small, leading to the predictable prank of someone parking an ogre right at there and players zoning in would get stuck and pile up behind this ogre. Probably one reason they did a redesign.

When you think about it the current setup is just plain weird, with the different colors and the needless complexity of circular rooms and tunnels.

Sony/DBG devs spend way too much time making simple things complicated "just because." I'm not saying dungeons should all be straight tunnels. Much to the contrary, part of the fun and challenge of the game is exploring dungeons and figuring them out. But a player Bazaar to sell stuff should not be needlessly complicated. The older version I am describing worked well except for the ogre trick, which could have been fixed by enlarging the zone-in. This was also the version where players could force people out of seller mode by mass-illusioning everyone into a large race so they'd be pushed off the platform. But they fixed that trick programmatically so it wouldn't be an issue anymore.

There were other Bazaar iterations also but I have to think about them...

The two bazaar versions you mention are the only two I remember.

Wow, hope I didn't hallucinate other Bazaars. But I sure seem to remember there were more than 2. Will have to some thinkin'. Maybe I'm flashing back to <Karana Forbid!> auction houses in other games, like WoW!

Edited, Jan 1st 2018 7:45am by Sippin

Mysterious force is short form for "we designed this path system much later to go onto zones with geometry it isn't almost compatible with, usually when you actually really need it to work. Hah!"

I only recall 2 versions of EQ baz. My understanding is that the Stall version had issues with people using tricks to "push" others out of vendor mode and/or into the pvp arena was a major factor in the revamp. The layered circle layout of the new bazaar is to fight lag (and I think they way overanticipated people using the buyer side). Plus, didn't they add new zone connections with the revamp? (That I can't recall exactly).

I would have made baz an outlet in major trading cities (and some funny backwoods... Shady for sure) that you access via an NPC:

1. hail the npc and you can open the baz window (by saying "buy" to it) and search and buy. No running around. With modern parcel system...
2. hail the npc and say "sell" you get ported to a big empty zone that has the trade satchels and you enter buyer mode (remembering that it took years to get offline selling). If I was in charge of this today... skip right to offline mode being the default to sell, no funny empty zone of zombies selling needed at all.