Share a little-known "Did you know...?" fact!

[Grinkles]

While playing with those Monk animations, I wondered whether or not they had been given to the Vah Shir or Frogloks despite that neither of the races had the Monk class enabled. While the cats simply stood still when prompted, the Frogloks — much to my surprise — did carry out all the animations!

A little Googling revealed that Monk Frogloks were indeed enabled in 2014 in EQ, 11 years after the race's creation, yet as far as I can tell, the animations had been in place since the beginning. Talk about sitting on content for ages!

Check out these Frogloks dishing out Round Kick, Dragon Punch, Eagle Strike/Tiger Claw, and Flying Kick animations. My favorite is the Round Kick — it's almost like Ryu's Hurricane Kick from Street Fighter!

On a related note, how cool would it be for the Monk class to be opened up to Frogloks in SoD?! It's the least diverse class of all due to there being only two race options (Human and Iksar), and even then, it seems like 9 out of 10 Monks are Iksars. Current Froglok racial bonuses don't synergize at all with the class, but it'd still be cool to see some increased diversity. Methinks lawful neutral Malath's tenets gel perfectly with the Monk class lore...

 

[Grinkles]

Did you know that, as far back as 1999, there has been a reference to a mysterious "Ghost" race (ID #32) that was never implemented?

And did you also know that, when Sony released their Call of the Forsaken expansion pack in 2013, they inexplicably decided to include files for the never-before-seen race #32, whose reference had been awaiting a model and textures for 14 long years?!

And did you also know that, by yoinking those files from a modern install of EQ, the model can be forced to load in SoD's current client despite that our client dates from 2008, five years before Call of the Forsaken?! This seems to suggest that the assets had been around since the game was first released, yet Sony sat on them all that time!

I only just discovered this by accident while browsing the EQEmu forums yesterday, so it's news to me. It turns out the Ghost model is actually a transparent version of various Human citizen/guard models with some of the color taken out of their skin and clothes. They animate the same as the familiar undead Erudite model seen in Ruins of the First City in SoD.

They may only be a hodgepodge of assets we've all seen before, but I find it amazing to see something completely "new" come to life after lying dormant for so many years. See for yourself and you be the judge:

 

[Binsin]

Did you know that while other classes who use items/clickies that cause bard animation to happen, Bards themselves no longer do these animations? I suspect Bards are breaking away from dancing around like a little girl when playing songs and just has some speakers on their gear and plays songs through their Ipods.

 

[fuwok]

I'm a total Grinkles mark but that ghost thing is cool as shit.

 

[Grinkles]

Did you know that the class-specific Luclin character select "zones" are still technically accessible using GM commands despite that they were retired in EQ 10+ years ago? They're all part of a single zone called load2, where each class's area is a self-contained, floating "island." This would make the zone perfect for a number of things, such as class guildhalls or even mini-events (like 6-man encounters).

Here's a shot showing the Rogue guild "island" and a few others in the background:

It's a shame that Sony abandoned these in favor of a generic character select background that serves all classes. The Luclin-era ones were themed around each class, and some even contained Easter eggs if the player were to hit that (now defunct) Explore button. Here's one example found down a stairway at the back of the Rogue guild ― a hidden stash of jewelry, pottery, potions, gold, and... uh... well-endowed mannequins:

 

[Grinkles]

Here's one that D&D fans or SoD/EQEmu server developers might find interesting.

Take a look at these two mobs:

What you're looking at are two separate EQ "races" even though they look identical, sound identical, and animate identically. The one on the left is race 21, an Evil Eye, while the one on the right is race 30, a Gasbag. Take a look at this snippet from the EQEmu races list to see what I mean:

For years, this puzzled me. Why would Verant have assigned the exact same model to two different race IDs?

The Evil Eye is obviously modeled after the infamous beholder monster of Dungeons & Dragons:

But what about the so-called Gasbag? Did Verant assign the already-used Evil Eye model to race 31 as an accident? Or maybe as a placeholder? How does "Gasbag" even remotely describe a giant, floating eyeball?

It turns out that the answer is in D&D yet again. There exists a creature in D&D lore known as a "gas spore," which the 5th Edition Monster Manual describes as "a spherical, balloon-like fungus that resembles a beholder from a distance.... Piercing the shell with even the weakest attack causes the creature to burst apart, releasing a cloud of deadly spores."

As far as I know, the concept of a fake Evil Eye that explodes on impact never made it into EQ, but the separate race ID and the name Gasbag suggest it was at least planned early on. I have a hunch that the race 30 Gasbag was given its own ID because it was eventually supposed to have its own sounds and animations (possibly including some kind of explosion) while otherwise looking identical to the race 21 Evil Eye. Maybe the exploding mechanic was too ambitious for the clunky, limited client of 1999, so the concept was scrapped without being fully removed from the list of races.

I suppose this boils down to "nobody knows," but I find it interesting nonetheless.

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EDIT: Bonus "Did you know?" fact while I'm on the subject of the Evil Eye model!

Did you know that this model has six texture sets? I stumbled across this fact a few months ago when digging through the game files, and it blew my mind! They are identical apart from the size of the pupil, which gets larger with each new set from 0 to 5:

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I would guess there was meant to be a texture swapping mechanic with some early EQ Evil Eye fight that made the pupil grow in order to warn players of something bad about to happen (like being charmed or some such), but I have no idea if it was ever utilized in any way. Anyone else know?

 

[Kedrin]

Could you make a gif with a pulsing pupil?

 

[Grinkles]

Could you make a gif with a pulsing pupil?

It's not perfect, but this should give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

This was recorded in realtime in the game.

If this were used for a real mob, it probably wouldn't be very useful to strobe through the textures so quickly due to the client's annoying habit of resetting something's animation frames whenever its appearance changes. The eye keeps snapping to frame 0 of its idling animation every single time the pupil dilates, which looks unconvincing and jerky. It might look better in a combat situation or if the pupil were to dilate gradually.

I guess this could be regarded as Verant's first stab at creating a unique, monster-specific "animation" beyond the usual idling, combat, and casting animations, but I can see why it never took off.

 

[Otcho]

thats cool

 

[Grinkles]

During that Elite War event last week in Eldenal's Mansion, I noticed that something seemed oddly familiar about the portrait of (presumably) Mayong Mistmoore hanging on one of the zone's many false walls. A reverse image search of the .bmp texture extracted from the zone files instantly matched it with a portrait of Henry VIII. All the artist did was change the background, make the hands blue, and stick a Dark Elf head on him! As to why the famed "inky" vampire was given a fabulous feathered 'do instead of the race's standard mullet, your guess is as good as mine...

 

[Aulian]

This is really cool given the history of Mayong and Henry VIII. He was the one who initiated the divine rule of kings basically saying that the kings were appointed by God, and Mayong himself was on a lifelong quest himself to essentially gain the power of Gods to become a God himself. Gives a little more substance to the reference than just "doesn't he look spiffy in gold".