Classic Research Walkthrough

Originally based on a post from Nilbog

Using Google For Classic Research

The first thing to remember is that most of what you are looking for no longer exists in a current google search.

For example, let's say I remember a "body guard" NPC that used to exist in "highhold keep": I know it used to exist, but I can't prove it. Not only do I want to find proof, I want to find the details to implement it, like its race, class, hp, locs, and any comments about its unique characteristics.

Most people's first instinct would be a Google search.

   body guard

But if I only want to find text about "body guard" where highkeep is also mentioned, I could add:

   +"body guard" +highkeep

The quotes indicate what order something should be in, and the + guarantees it will be included in your search. But that turns up ... nothing.

When using the "+" symbol, Google gets very specific, so we need to get the zone name correct (with spaces):

   +"body guard" +"high keep"

Results

The first link is for Allakhazam's (aka Illia's Bestiary). Cool, let's look at the site's entry.

The oldest comments have been removed (NOTE: the poster was spammming "dick" back in 2001), with newer conversations continuing into 2005. This shows the bodyguard existed at some point, but not much else ... which is not very helpful to the devs.

Keyword Variations

Obviously, we could replace +"high keep" with variations of the zone name, such as "highkeep", "high hold keep", "highhold keep", "highpass keep", etc. Even if a zone/mob has an official name, it can often be helpful to search for common incorrect variations, since classic players often used incorrect names.

Site-Specific Searches

If I go back to Google, I can use that site's address.. I could do a search for +"body guard" and only use their site. quotes and + to make sure its listed and in the right order, and whatever follows site: will be where it looks. Code: +"body guard" site:www.adminpage.net/

However, even with variations, we still don't find a lot of useful info on Google. Next stop: the Way Back Machine!

The Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive has collected saved websites (eg. from Alexa) and made them accessible via a tool called the Way Back Machine. Since 1996, if a website was public and archived, this is the place to find it.

If you like Allakhazams, then you can do a search for an archive of [1]. After entering it in Wayback, we'll be taken to this link, which shows archives between May 11, 2000 and and August 22, 2008.

Some of these archives were taken when the site was unavailable or down however, so what Wayback gathers can be hit-and-miss. Let's try the first entry, May, 11, 2000.

Viewing a Wayback Archive Page

Clicking on the link, if I then try the archived Bestiary and scroll down to Highpass Keep, choosing it results in an error that it wasn't saved in the archive. Ok, that's fine. Moving on. If I return to the original archived allakhazam's page, if I were to choose.. Antonica, under Zones, then choose Highpass Keep, then Highkeep bestiary list, it displays properly.

After that effort, there was still no valuable information on the page. This is the hit-and-miss I referred to earlier. Moving on ...

ShowEQ Logs

Back in classic, some players used a (banned "cheat") program called ShowEQ to record information invisible to players (eg. the exact positions of every mob in the zone and what they were wielding). There are saved Show EQ spawn logs on various places on the internet.

(Editor: Nilbog's original tutorial referenced a [now invalid link] to a [German site.)

A bit of googling turns up this thread on the EQ Emulator forum, which links to this archived log site.

That site has a list of links to zones, and when we check the one for High Keep, we can see that it provides basic information about our bodyguard NPC:

body guard, a 45 4540 Human Rogue (-89,-305)

Okay, now we have the correct name, "a body guard", its level (45), its hitpoints (4540), class (rogue), and a Y/X loc in highkeep.

Lets take 1 more trip.. over to Everlore.com. It used to be great for information... prior to 2002 or so? Don't remember exactly, but now its just adspace.

waybackmachine search for. http://everlore.com

Let's try.. August 15th, 2000.

Using the same methods we used to find the old allakhazam page, let's search for the body guard. :P

Bestiary, High Hold Keep. And there we go, a body guard, with comments and general loot information

There is plenty of information available online; you just have to find it. Using those methods for the common npc research is generally fruitful.