One of my absolute favorite memories in EQ was overhearing rumors of a secret chamber hidden beneath the waves of a large ocean zone. This room, known on my server as "the fire pot room," was located in the Timorous Deep underneath a giant sunken wizard's spire. The square room boasted 12 fire pots, four on each side, and each of the pots were adorned to mirror the style of those found in the major racial cities within the known world. What made this room so incredible is that you could actually click on any of the different pots to be teleported to its corresponding city. Some people were fortunate enough to actually set their bind point to that room before the devs locked that down, giving those few lucky players unprecedented access to the world.
Now, I know there have been lengthy discussions about how PoK ruined immersion by introducing similar transportation mechanisms. I'm not looking to rehash that discussion here (this room existed years before PoK anyway). The point in bringing up this room is to reminisce about the feeling that came with making such an incredible discovery. Not many people knew about it. Those that did guarded its secret carefully...
What I find so fascinating about the fire pots wasn't the teleportation, but rather the social impact it made within the player community. Rumors circulating and strong player opinions forming. Was it real or were people inventing in-game folklore? I remember rallying a group of in-game friends on a Friday night to set off with the hopes of validating the existence of the fire pot room. All we had were some hand-scribbled directions based entirely on conjecture; the rest was up to us to figure out. It took hours of swimming and exploring before we found the spires and made that epic drop into the underground room, but it was unbelievably worth it.
Finding the room invoked feelings that you don't necessarily get from uber loot or even from a server-first boss kill; this was different. This was players experiencing the world together. This was epic in every sense of the word.
I hope we see this in Pantheon in some way, shape, or form.
~Talv
Talvaris said:...What I find so fascinating about the fire pots wasn't the teleportation, but rather the social impact it made within the player community. Rumors circulating and strong player opinions forming. Was it real or were people inventing in-game folklore? I remember rallying a group of in-game friends on a Friday night to set off with the hopes of validating the existence of the fire pot room. All we had were some hand-scribbled directions based entirely on conjecture; the rest was up to us to figure out. It took hours of swimming and exploring before we found the spires and made that epic drop into the underground room, but it was unbelievably worth it....
You've made a wonderful post that illustrates one of the intangible and unspecifiable aspects of the game that are the most important.
There needs to be complete mystery. The rules of the world don't have to be liked by everyone, but they have to be immutable. The player has to be kept out of the world and the characters kept in. For example, when a player gets frustrated because he didn't get his spawn, he can't petition that and get one - too bad - those are the laws of the universe and they don't change for you.
With that comes a silence - the gods who make this world don't discuss/explain/argue with the residents (meaning Devs don't answer to the players).
One side-effect of that is the mystery and urban legends that develop because of this.
I wrote earlier about the urban legend of having a magic weapon to hit magic monsters - it was all rubbish but (like you) I went off on a huge travel quest with my group of real life friends looking for a Runed Totem Staff because it had +1 "magic" on it.
How many rumors have you heard about how to spawn Quillmane? Seriously - probably the most speculated trigger in all of EQ. But *NOT* knowing was the magic.
And having places like Allakhazam and EQTraders and EQatlas and such were great because there was no guarantee they were correct. But that is one of the things that built the social fabric of the game - we (the real life players) had to band together to share information and figure stuff out 100% on our own with no help from the Devs and no changing the rules (except when nerfing was necessary etcera etcetera)
In fact it has not been a secret on my server for a long time - once the first person found it, everybody knew it within 1 week (a friend who knew a friend etc ...) .
It was also totally useless because there was a dragon with a huge aggro radius roaming near that place . Being bound there and being surprised by Faydedar guaranteed an infinite death loop :)
I went there with my necro to check if the info was correct, died to Faydedar, came back, summoned my corpse and never returned .
Actually it has been because of the dragon that the room was discovered first place - raids going for Faydedar (paladin and druid epic) found the underwater spire and the room.
Ah and btw there IS a way how to spawn Quillmane . There are 2 PH (a lioness and a calf) and their paths are known . People do it now routinely within a few minutes . The only "hard" part is to check if Quillmane spawned on one of its spawn locations or not .
I remember being bound at TD pots and getting eaten by Faydedar :P
Beyond the timorous deep pots, there were pots in old world (qeynos catacombs, toxxulia forest, lesser faydark, neriak third gate) -- from my understanding these specific pots were for GM portals to allow quick travel (not sure how true that is). Also in neriak third gate, there is a blocked wall next to the click pot (goes down a ramp) .. potential entrance for neriak palace (aka neriakd) that didn't make it into EQ?
Deadshade said:Ah and btw there IS a way how to spawn Quillmane . There are 2 PH (a lioness and a calf) and their paths are known . People do it now routinely within a few minutes . The only "hard" part is to check if Quillmane spawned on one of its spawn locations or not .
I think the point was more.. how long did it take to figure this out.. and who was the person to do it?
The information wasnt handed to you on a silver platter like it is in most games today.
Maximis said:Deadshade said:Ah and btw there IS a way how to spawn Quillmane . There are 2 PH (a lioness and a calf) and their paths are known . People do it now routinely within a few minutes . The only "hard" part is to check if Quillmane spawned on one of its spawn locations or not .
I think the point was more.. how long did it take to figure this out.. and who was the person to do it?
The information wasnt handed to you on a silver platter like it is in most games today.
Actually I belonged to the people who noticed that when they were hunting lions for pelts in SK (as I liked tradeskills I was often gethering material for skilling up), they always saw several Quillmanes . That gave rise to the "lion hypothesis" on my server which has been shown true a bit later . It took longer to find the calf because nobody was systematically hunting calfs .
But I remember that the advice "kill all lions at and south of Splitpaw" existed relatively early on.
In the first years of EQ (99-2000) there were many people, especially rangers, who were spending quite a lot of time "hunting" the PHs of rare non static spawns (Pyzjn, AC, Quillmane, Minotaur Hero etc) .
And as the system was very primitive - for every NPC there was just a spawn table with probabilities and fixed spawn timers, it was not difficult for a dedicated ranger to narrow down the mobs to the ones who were potential PHs e.g who were spawning on the table that contained the rare spawn .
In later expansions nobody bothered about this anymore because all interesting loot was dropping on raids and non static rare spawns became irrelevant .
Indeed AFAIK in "modern" MMOs the concept of PH and non static rare spawns doesn't exist at all .
I admit that the EQ "mystery" about "what is the damned mob that will make X spawn ?" provided room for research and experiments that could have an added value for the minority who likes that kind of things . I also admit that my ranger alt spent quite some time figuring out the Minotaur Hero spawn table and that I enjoyed it even if for most it would be a mind numbing activity :)
Anyway the general interest didn't last long - maximum 1 - 1.5 years .
Great posts and perspectives :)
Related I think...
I remember years ago reading about different raids and other events that were uncovered in the early days of EQ
I was always amazed at the teamwork that had to have been done to figure this stuff out
Now I know from reading articles and forum posts that GMs helped the guilds out occasionally when they got stumped but still... the degree of teamwork and communication and archiving of knowledge - in my opinion - for a VIDEO GAME... was simply amazing! I've always been amazed. I have a genius IQ and think I'm pretty smart most of the time. But, dang! The people that discovered EQ's secrets were no slouches!
Your experiences with the fire pots is very similar I think. People turned over EVERY STONE in this game it seems. Back then, in my thinking, I was like.... WHO WOULD DO THIS?? LOL
Very keen minds. Very determined players. :)
Hats off to all of them! And to you!
A little bit of lore background surrounding this mystery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbfiDzYdbQ
Talvaris said:Now, I know there have been lengthy discussions about how PoK ruined immersion by introducing similar transportation mechanisms. I'm not looking to rehash that discussion here (this room existed years before PoK anyway). The point in bringing up this room is to reminisce about the feeling that came with making such an incredible discovery. Not many people knew about it. Those that did guarded its secret carefully...
A lot more risk/reward to the pots anwyay - I know friends that were bound there that went into a /death loop from the dragon. But yes, it was an incredible discovery - one that I wouldn't mind Pantheon replicating as long as their in some similar guardian figure to a very hidden area.
Nimryl said:Games/mmos need more mystery too them. I hope Pantheon has lots and lots.. While yes you can look them up.. I hope they have ones in there anyway.. it brings a special X factor when one is discovered... it makes you wonder what else is there out there we just don't know about? I love it. I hope there are secrets out there 2-4 years after launch and are yet to be discovered.. I just hope the VR staff don't give these secrets away (to friends; and there friends etc).
If you have played EQ or EQ2 you probably know that some staff blends in with certain guilds, get the beta keys for their guilds for the xpacks, etc. Least when SOE was the one running it, not sure how much that has really changed over the years to DBG.
I should add there aren't many good options here because there are many reasons this happens, just to name a few: 1) staff wants to play their own game of course, 2) you typically need people other than yourself to test out things, 3) people tend to spit out secrets, put your reason here.
I loved secrets like the fire pot room. It made everything seem so much more exciting. I also loved the concept of hidden zones which Kedge Keep and Veksar kinda were as you had to swim around underwater to find the zone line. Things like that just add to the game. I love the idea of having zones in Pantheon that no one has discovered because they are so well hidden and then one day a guild discoveres them and all kinds of secrets come out from talking to the NPCs in the zone.
Things like that make a game worth playing if you ask me.
fazool said:Talvaris said:...What I find so fascinating about the fire pots wasn't the teleportation, but rather the social impact it made within the player community. Rumors circulating and strong player opinions forming. Was it real or were people inventing in-game folklore? I remember rallying a group of in-game friends on a Friday night to set off with the hopes of validating the existence of the fire pot room. All we had were some hand-scribbled directions based entirely on conjecture; the rest was up to us to figure out. It took hours of swimming and exploring before we found the spires and made that epic drop into the underground room, but it was unbelievably worth it....
You've made a wonderful post that illustrates one of the intangible and unspecifiable aspects of the game that are the most important.
There needs to be complete mystery. The rules of the world don't have to be liked by everyone, but they have to be immutable. The player has to be kept out of the world and the characters kept in. For example, when a player gets frustrated because he didn't get his spawn, he can't petition that and get one - too bad - those are the laws of the universe and they don't change for you.
With that comes a silence - the gods who make this world don't discuss/explain/argue with the residents (meaning Devs don't answer to the players).
One side-effect of that is the mystery and urban legends that develop because of this.
I wrote earlier about the urban legend of having a magic weapon to hit magic monsters - it was all rubbish but (like you) I went off on a huge travel quest with my group of real life friends looking for a Runed Totem Staff because it had +1 "magic" on it.
How many rumors have you heard about how to spawn Quillmane? Seriously - probably the most speculated trigger in all of EQ. But *NOT* knowing was the magic.
And having places like Allakhazam and EQTraders and EQatlas and such were great because there was no guarantee they were correct. But that is one of the things that built the social fabric of the game - we (the real life players) had to band together to share information and figure stuff out 100% on our own with no help from the Devs and no changing the rules (except when nerfing was necessary etcera etcetera)
Im not sure how early you started EQ but you certainly DID need a magical weapon to hit magical monsters like wisps. There was no "+1" magic damage but if you didnt have a magical weapon the attack just said something to the sort of "You swing at a wisp but do no damage because you dont have a magical weapon".
I believe this was changed but I dont know when. I just remember a wisp kicking my butt because i couldnt even damage it with my cracked staff. Once i finally figured that out i farmed the crap out of them because of the GLS. Bought my first FBR for 300pp which was an insane amount of money back then.
beautifully said:Im not sure how early you started EQ but you certainly DID need a magical weapon to hit magical monsters like wisps. There was no "+1" magic damage but if you didnt have a magical weapon the attack just said something to the sort of "You swing at a wisp but do no damage because you dont have a magical weapon".
I believe this was changed but I dont know when. I just remember a wisp kicking my butt because i couldnt even damage it with my cracked staff. Once i finally figured that out i farmed the crap out of them because of the GLS. Bought my first FBR for 300pp which was an insane amount of money back then.
And I loved that you even needed magic boots to kick them too!
I think it has to do with Miragul. Here is a youtube movie on the subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbfiDzYdbQ
at the 4:10 mark it talks about the Pot Room
EDIT: I See some one posted the exact same link as the one I did but closer to the OP. Did not mean to copy somthing someone had already said, just did not see it the first time through