Funny Early Bugs in EQ

Mylan12

I know a lot of the people looking forward to this game also played EQ. 

Early EQ had lots of bugs. Some that I still remember to this day. 

I am sure I missed a lot of them but I though I list some of the ones I saw and remember.

(1) I played a woodelf bard and once in I think it was greater faydark, he went into this building with some NPCs and

somehow I lost control of him. He became well another NPC in that building.  I ended up in email contact with someone at

verant and they keep on emailing me files and such to try and it took almost a week before I got control back. I also could not login 

at all during this time. I did get lots of email from other players telling me he was still there and doing well as a NPC.

(2) Another one I still remember was once my guild did a raid in Hate right after an update. Well the story I heard was that they got decimal point off on something in the bard apparently related to aggro.  Anyway we go on this raid and they pull the mobs and everyone of them head straight to my bard and kill him. Next pull the same thing and no one could pull agro off of me. They finally had to leave me dead and drag my corpse around to res if any bard loot drop as it was not possible to keep me alive.

(3) Of course I got the falling through the world bug usually when I went up over a zone wall. At first a GM had to pull you out but they quickly made it so that you automatically reset to a safe spot.

(4) I think every bard did this but you could get up on top of buildings in freeport and qeynos using bard skills but you could not get down. So you had to called a GM. They would get you down but they were not happy about it.

gervaise1

DMKano said:

This was right after launch

Get as close to the zone border without actually zoning in - start casting Gate spell - then zone at the same time.

If done correctly - this would crash the zone and kick/disconnect all the players in the zone.

I know someone - a dear friend of mine, ehm - who got banned for this.

Live and learn

Ah so that may be how we endedup in the chat rooms - plural, each chat room could only handle so many folk at once. Ah those early days, don't miss them at all.

Scorchien

  I remeber loggin in one day and was able to forage up Legendaries on my Ranger .. was funny as hell

Scorchien

DMKano said:

This was right after launch

Get as close to the zone border without actually zoning in - start casting Gate spell - then zone at the same time.

If done correctly - this would crash the zone and kick/disconnect all the players in the zone.

I know someone - a dear friend of mine, ehm - who got banned for this.

Live and learn

That would make your friend an A-hole ................


 Sorry , but thats the kind of person that intentionally does something like that ..

svann

Server bug forgot the last 2 expacs you bought, so many people got rolled back several levels and couldnt xp until they fixed it.  Ok, that wasnt really funny.

Raagnarz

The best one I remember and this was within days of it launching, was the system the boats used. Me and a buddy were crossing the ocean to Atonica to Faydwer through the OOT. He was a rogue and for shits and giggles was practicing his pickpocket. Well low and behold he accidentally clicked the boat itself. Turns out the way Verant coded the boat to go slow in the water was they loaded it with a TON of copper. He pocketed it all over the course of a few minutes and the boat got faster and faster to the point it hit ludicrous speed when it was empty. What took 20 minutes before literally took 3 now and that was only because it stopped at a dock in the middle of OOT (dock wait time didn't change just sail speed). Within a couple weeks they changed that though I don't remember whether they mentioned that little nugget in the patch notes lol.

Dullahan

Maybe I didn't play creatively enough, but I don't personally remember many bugs other than the obvious ones like boats doing crazy stuff and dropping you in the ocean or sharks killing you while actually inside the boat cabin.

Mendel

The community provided nearly as many humorous moments with some of the various myths that developed.  My personal favorite were the various ways to get specific rare mobs to spawn.  'Kill all lions/spiders/bears in W Karana to get Yiz Pon to spawn'.  That was probably my favorite.  It was amazing the number of ways people believed things worked, when it was a simple 28 day timer (+/- a random # of hours).  I heard variations of this in numerous zones, even through the Luclin expansion.

I was pretty lucky with actual bugs.  I don't recall many, but the one I remember most was the recipe for Ball of Dough.  I got in several arguments with CS over that one.  I had all the ingredients, but the recipe would not work.  Turned out, that the patch that installed a fix to this recipe didn't get propagated from the test/development server correctly.  CS was confirming that the recipe worked on the Test Server, but it did not work on the Rodcet Nife server.  After a week of two of submitting bug reports, I finally got a CS supervisor to log onto the Rodcet Nife server and try the problem.  Emergency patch a day later.

virgommo

Not a bug per say, but we've all done something similar at one time or another as this guy.....EQ Storytime from Wayback.

I was invisible and running through the Karanas one day when I noticed a young gnome near the gypsy camp. He was fighting a lion and though it looked like he would win the battle, being a fellow gnome, I decided to help the guy out. 

I targeted the lion, clicked on my mesmerize spell, then *started* to type: "I'm mesmerizing the lion for you." I got as far as: "I'm " when I remembered that I had replaced my mesmerize spell with an Area of Effect mesmerize spell... and that I was standing next to an NPC enchantress. Gulp. 

My movement keys are mapped to "w a s d" so I frantically stabbed at my keyboard, trying to MOVE and interrupt the spell. 

I forgot that I was in typing mode. 

The gypsy enchantress didn't like my attempt to mezz her so she promptly charmed me and made me go after the gnome I had been trying to *save*. I watched in horror as my peace-loving character, knife flailing like a crazed sushi chef, chased the little guy down and stabbed him to death. 

I found my victim later and apologized profusely... I even gave him a nice weapon and a piece of armor. He was great about it, and laughed when I told him what happened. 

He said he didn't know WHAT was going on. One minute he was fighting a lion, the next minute a strange gnome appeared out of NOWHERE, announced: "I'm wwwaaaddd", then sliced him up like Freddy Krueger.

This is one story that has always stuck in my mind over the years.

kruler

The zone that had the entrance in the middle of the lake in ill omen, there was a glitch in the ground, I would reverse kite 6 that was the max for some weird reason, and my necro would dot sit and play gems, rinse and repeat for 100,s aa,s and quite a few levels loved that zone.

Just popped into EQ1 for first time in years and had a quick peek on the US and EU servers for EQ2 aswell,  EQ1 has more players by a long shot than Eq2 as 12.02 am 5/4/2018 was very surprised EQ2 is just deserted starter areas and lvl 90 to 100 areas, just had an expac and its tumbleweed.

Amathe

Not so much a bug as a feature, really. Someone giving you a bazillion copper pieces, resulting in you being stuck in the ground like a lawn dart from the weight. 

svann

This is from vanguard but still funny.
In vanguard they have a call of the hero spell that works cross world since there arent traditional zone lines.  You get a summon and a window pops up and you accept it.  Now even though there arent zone lines, there are still chunk lines that you can run to to lose agro.  We were fighting a difficult name somewhat near the chunkline.  Things fell apart and we made a run for it.  Just across the line my buddy disappears.  The mob had summoned him.  He said he even got a accept/reject window but he hadnt read it he just accepted.

Mylan12

Dullahan said:

Maybe I didn't play creatively enough, but I don't personally remember many bugs other than the obvious ones like boats doing crazy stuff and dropping you in the ocean or sharks killing you while actually inside the boat cabin.

I had to stick all my stuff in the bank and do a naked boat ride as in early EQ, I only made it all the way across in about one out of every four attempts.
I was part of the early level 50's in EQ so we got to see lots of bugs that were fixed fairly early on.
I remember when my bard got to level 50, close to half his skills did not even work or do anything.

Mylan12

DMKano said:

How about pathing or getting mobs stuck in terrain xploits? There were lots of those - so many that they just made mobs teleport to you or summon you.

I leveled my chanter exclusively this way before it got patched.

I never xploited the terrain as it was too easy to level the normal way. I did have to afk once so I stuck my bard in a place where you could xploit as i knew he be safe from trains and such. The AFk turned out to be a long one so I came and checked on him and noticed a GM nearby in the zone. When I finally got back and moved, the GM sent me a tell informing me that I was in an xploitable location. I sent back, "Yeah I know. I reported it in beta. When are yall going to fix it. "

Mylan12

virgommo said:

Not a bug per say, but we've all done something similar at one time or another as this guy.....EQ Storytime from Wayback.

I was invisible and running through the Karanas one day when I noticed a young gnome near the gypsy camp. He was fighting a lion and though it looked like he would win the battle, being a fellow gnome, I decided to help the guy out. 

I targeted the lion, clicked on my mesmerize spell, then *started* to type: "I'm mesmerizing the lion for you." I got as far as: "I'm " when I remembered that I had replaced my mesmerize spell with an Area of Effect mesmerize spell... and that I was standing next to an NPC enchantress. Gulp. 

My movement keys are mapped to "w a s d" so I frantically stabbed at my keyboard, trying to MOVE and interrupt the spell. 

I forgot that I was in typing mode. 

The gypsy enchantress didn't like my attempt to mezz her so she promptly charmed me and made me go after the gnome I had been trying to *save*. I watched in horror as my peace-loving character, knife flailing like a crazed sushi chef, chased the little guy down and stabbed him to death. 

I found my victim later and apologized profusely... I even gave him a nice weapon and a piece of armor. He was great about it, and laughed when I told him what happened. 

He said he didn't know WHAT was going on. One minute he was fighting a lion, the next minute a strange gnome appeared out of NOWHERE, announced: "I'm wwwaaaddd", then sliced him up like Freddy Krueger.

This is one story that has always stuck in my mind over the years.

In early EQ, bards could mez other players if they tried to duel them on the PVE servers. Of course no one would duel a bard.

Anyway on an early raid ( I don't remember where) our warrior had some uber sword that was supposed to have an AOE proc but it was bugged and didn't work or so we though. He ended getting charmed by some mob and then of course the proc worked and he wiped out the whole raid before we realized what was happening. 

Ridelynn

Were the hell levels intentional, or someone's bad math skills?

Seems like it was 30 and 45 or something, took like 2-3 times the XP as normal levels for no rational reason.

Dvora

Raagnarz said:

The best one I remember and this was within days of it launching, was the system the boats used. Me and a buddy were crossing the ocean to Atonica to Faydwer through the OOT. He was a rogue and for shits and giggles was practicing his pickpocket. Well low and behold he accidentally clicked the boat itself. Turns out the way Verant coded the boat to go slow in the water was they loaded it with a TON of copper. He pocketed it all over the course of a few minutes and the boat got faster and faster to the point it hit ludicrous speed when it was empty. What took 20 minutes before literally took 3 now and that was only because it stopped at a dock in the middle of OOT (dock wait time didn't change just sail speed). Within a couple weeks they changed that though I don't remember whether they mentioned that little nugget in the patch notes lol.

I have to call BS/coincidence on this one.  I doubt any weight calculations went into boat speed as it is highly unlikely that back then they used any sort of physics at all.  Fun story though

I guess it is possible since player movement was affected by weight, but since the boat was clearly faster than a player, they had other ways of playing with speed, why do it with weight.  Wierd and unlikely, but maybe.

Elderknight

You could Pass through zone wall, then target and pull mobs and they would run against the zone wall as you killed them, Turn Platinum into copper go over the max weight of game and become - 200000 weight so you can hold as many large items in bags as you wanted. Killing Guards each weapon sold for 17 plat if i remember correctly , until they nerfed it.

Elderknight

Good old Dupe bug as well, you and another person could click trade and cancel at same time and both would receive item.

Zindaihas

Does anyone remember the one in Siren's Grotto that worked to your benefit?  That was the zone where you were supposed to cross underwater in order to get to Western Wastes (if memory serves correctly).  It was a pretty difficult swim.  But the bug allowed you to bypass it altogether by simply cramming yourself in the corner of the entrance, camping out and then just logging back in.  Once you logged back in, you were magically on the other side of the zone without having to making the arduous journey across it.  As good as any magicians call spell.

kruler

Zindaihas said:

Does anyone remember the one in Siren's Grotto that worked to your benefit?  That was the zone where you were supposed to cross underwater in order to get to Western Wastes (if memory serves correctly).  It was a pretty difficult swim.  But the bug allowed you to bypass it altogether by simply cramming yourself in the corner of the entrance, camping out and then just logging back in.  Once you logged back in, you were magically on the other side of the zone without having to making the arduous journey across it.  As good as any magicians call spell.

There was a couple of places like that, some raid bosses places to, you could camp out at a certain spot, come back and be behind all the trash mobs, pointless really but worked for small raid targets on a tight time line, ie main healer needing to go to work in 2 hours as been up all night, AHHHH those crazy crazy days, how I didn't die in real life is a wonder.

Interitus

DMKano said:

This was right after launch

Get as close to the zone border without actually zoning in - start casting Gate spell - then zone at the same time.

If done correctly - this would crash the zone and kick/disconnect all the players in the zone.

I know someone - a dear friend of mine, ehm - who got banned for this.

Live and learn

While not an EQ story. I found a bug in CoX where if you used a certain debuff on a NPC under level 5, it would crash the zone. So my friends and I went around crashing zones. I then sent in a ticket, claiming we were 'testing' various zones to see if it happened everywhere or only certain places. They emailed me back thanking me.

Dullahan

Mylan12 said:

virgommo said:

Not a bug per say, but we've all done something similar at one time or another as this guy.....EQ Storytime from Wayback.

I was invisible and running through the Karanas one day when I noticed a young gnome near the gypsy camp. He was fighting a lion and though it looked like he would win the battle, being a fellow gnome, I decided to help the guy out. 

I targeted the lion, clicked on my mesmerize spell, then *started* to type: "I'm mesmerizing the lion for you." I got as far as: "I'm " when I remembered that I had replaced my mesmerize spell with an Area of Effect mesmerize spell... and that I was standing next to an NPC enchantress. Gulp. 

My movement keys are mapped to "w a s d" so I frantically stabbed at my keyboard, trying to MOVE and interrupt the spell. 

I forgot that I was in typing mode. 

The gypsy enchantress didn't like my attempt to mezz her so she promptly charmed me and made me go after the gnome I had been trying to *save*. I watched in horror as my peace-loving character, knife flailing like a crazed sushi chef, chased the little guy down and stabbed him to death. 

I found my victim later and apologized profusely... I even gave him a nice weapon and a piece of armor. He was great about it, and laughed when I told him what happened. 

He said he didn't know WHAT was going on. One minute he was fighting a lion, the next minute a strange gnome appeared out of NOWHERE, announced: "I'm wwwaaaddd", then sliced him up like Freddy Krueger.

This is one story that has always stuck in my mind over the years.

In early EQ, bards could mez other players if they tried to duel them on the PVE servers. Of course no one would duel a bard.

Anyway on an early raid ( I don't remember where) our warrior had some uber sword that was supposed to have an AOE proc but it was bugged and didn't work or so we though. He ended getting charmed by some mob and then of course the proc worked and he wiped out the whole raid before we realized what was happening. 

Early pvp on rallos zek was insane for that reason. For the first month or so bards and enchanters just charmed everyone. Super griefy.

EponyxDamor

Not sure if it was ever a bug, but you could drop a shortsword from your inventory and it would always point north. This made a great way to tell which direction you were going if you didn't have the True North skill leveled up.

Scott23

I think it was West Karana, but there was a zone where you could go into the river and get beneath the water.  The water would be overhead, but there was air as the river bottom went down further than the water.

We used to hold guild meetings there as no one would bother us and mobs couldn't path there.

Raagnarz

Dvora said:

Raagnarz said:

The best one I remember and this was within days of it launching, was the system the boats used. Me and a buddy were crossing the ocean to Atonica to Faydwer through the OOT. He was a rogue and for shits and giggles was practicing his pickpocket. Well low and behold he accidentally clicked the boat itself. Turns out the way Verant coded the boat to go slow in the water was they loaded it with a TON of copper. He pocketed it all over the course of a few minutes and the boat got faster and faster to the point it hit ludicrous speed when it was empty. What took 20 minutes before literally took 3 now and that was only because it stopped at a dock in the middle of OOT (dock wait time didn't change just sail speed). Within a couple weeks they changed that though I don't remember whether they mentioned that little nugget in the patch notes lol.

I have to call BS/coincidence on this one.  I doubt any weight calculations went into boat speed as it is highly unlikely that back then they used any sort of physics at all.  Fun story though

I guess it is possible since player movement was affected by weight, but since the boat was clearly faster than a player, they had other ways of playing with speed, why do it with weight.  Wierd and unlikely, but maybe.

Oh it was most definitely real. They basically coded the boat to be encumbered by the weight of the money. Same way a player would slow gradually to a standstill the more weight they carried over encumbrance level. They had the ability for things to move faster or slow, just look at the speed buff SOW. So its not like everything had to move at one speed. My best guess as a former software dev, they coded it like that initially for alpha/beta etc just to get it up and running, then forgot about it. Its so obscure who would have thought, but it most definitely happened. We repeatedly did it, I even rolled a rogue to see if it would work. It most definitely did and like I said it was changed within a few weeks, but I was always disappointed when a rogue wasn't waiting on the docks for the boat with me whenever I had to cross an ocean lol.