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Classic Research

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The founders of Project 1999 have built it on the premise that it should be as "classic" (ie. as true to how the game was in 1999-2001) as possible. They've done a tremendous job, and the project is incredibly close to the classic game.

However, there are still a small number of issues (many of which are noted on the Non-Classic Compendium) that remain unclassic. In order to correct these issues, Nilbog and the other developers require evidence of how things used to work during the classic time period.

Contents

How to do (Good) Classic Research

See the Classic Research Walkthrough.

Existing Classic Research

Many P99 players have done extensive research already, so in some cases, it can help to start with what already exists.

The Project 99 Bug Forums has a complete history of posted research, but the (currently nascent) Existing Classic Research Topics page strives to organize past research by topic.

Modern (But Still Useful) Research Sources

  • Allakhazam - great data on zones/items/npcs/etc. but generally a poor source for classic research because most of their data was updated after the classic period. However, sometimes classic-era comments (or post-classic comments that still reference classic things) can be found on it. Also sometimes knowledge of how an NPC worked after the classic period can be useful in understanding (eg. to make sense of confusing comments that might reference the old or new version of something)
  • Lucy - Allakhazam's separate spell and item effect database; another poor site for classic research, but a very good one for modern EQ data; this makes it perfect for data which hasn't changed much since classic (eg. the Buff Lines page was compiled largely from Lucy data)
  • Magelo another very good site for modern EQ, but has limited classic data

Official Verant Announcements (eg. Patch History)

Back in the day Verant told players about changes they made to the game, and this provides a wealth of classic info.

  • The Patch Notes page attempts to compile all Verant patch notes, including harder-to-find ones (eg. ones from Japanese servers)
  • Classic researcher CAiu also found this patch history (TODO: go through it to see if it has anything our page is missing)

Wayback Machine (ie. Web) Sources

  • Allakhazam (Illia's Beastiary) - the Wayback version of Allakhazam is a lot less detailed than the modern one, but it *only* has classic info
  • EQ Atlas - this site is the source of most wiki maps, but it also has some articles and a forum where people discuss things like the locations of classic NPCs
  • EQ Traders - The classic source for tradeskill info
  • Caster's Realm was an extremely popular classic EQ site, and it had both a main site and a separate forum site:
    • NOTE: Unfortunately on both sites the earliest (ie. in-classic-era) archives are incomplete, and often only have links without the content of those links. Thus, it may be necessary to look at slightly later (Luclin-era) archives to see the content.

Class-Specific Resources

Site Description Last Classic Post-Classic Most Recent
EQ Clerics Cleric class forums (most searchable class forum with lots of old posts) http://www.eqclerics.org/

Druid

Site Description Last Classic Post-Classic Most Recent
Druid's Grove The most popular classic Druid site 12/7/2000 5/25/2002 2/2/2006

Enchanter

Site Description Last Classic Post-Classic Most Recent
EverQuest Enchanters Discussion 1/07/2001
Xornn's Guide to Enchanting Possibly the most popular classic guide site for Enchanters 4/14/2002
The Runes Another popular Enchanter site, its forums would later become popular among Enchanters, but was barren in classic. 5/15/2001
Caster's Realm, Enchanter Forums While it eventually became a site about all things EQ, Caster's Realm started as an Enchanter site, so these forums have a good amount of content 4/10/2001
EQ Enchanters Realm This forum for Enchanters has mostly classic content 6/2/2001
Enchanters Assembly Another great Enchanter site 3/01/2001
Enchanter Talk a 16-page long thread started by Absor (a live EQ developer/community relations) where Enchanters made requests for changes to their class ... and revealed a lor about classic Enchanter play 1/26/2001

Usenet

Usenet was a pre-web forum system, that people still used to discuss EQ (even though Usenet was somewhat antiquated by then).

  • alt.games.everquest an archive of a (Usenet?) message group for EverQuest, which includes messages from the classic era (and can be searched)

Technical Sources

Developers during the classic era used tools like Show EQ to capture "secret" game data being sent to/from the game's server, and modern developers have "decompiled" (looked at the plumbing of) the EQ game clients, to learn more about the game. Sources like these provide valuable technical data about classic EQ.

  • EQClassic source code - researcher Caiu was asked not to distribute this by an EQClassic dev (presumably because it would give away too many of the game's secrets to P99 players) ... however, it is assumed that the P99 devs have this
  • NAS' repository - The old source is able to be booted and you can login and admire the old UI, not painlessly however getting everything to work is gonna be an exercise in persistence

Other

Thanks

Thanks to all classic researchers who help contribute to this page, with a special note for researcher Caiu (who contributed a large store of links).

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