I have only just heard of SoD. Seeking info.

Sillyturtle

Dalayan Beginner
Hi folks.

I'm honestly shocked that I've only just heard about this place. It certainly sounds very impressive and tantalizing, but before I look at getting involved I figured I'd ask a couple questions and hope they don't upset anyone.

How hard is it for a new player to become involved in SoD? (Wondering if I'll be purely alone until the very end game as is common with longstanding games as they become top heavy after a while.)

How hard is it for a new player to be SUCCESSFUL in SoD? (This applies to everything, from becoming wealthy, to making good progress, to gaining access to end game, to leveling up)

Is now a good time to join?

I read in another thread that two out of three active developers have left within the past month. How has that effected the server and how do you think it will effect it?

And the big one: How active is SoD? the front page says it has the biggest population of any EQ private server, but I've been on P99 since 2015 and I've never heard of here until now, as I said. Is that boast still accurate?
 
Hi folks.

I'm honestly shocked that I've only just heard about this place. It certainly sounds very impressive and tantalizing, but before I look at getting involved I figured I'd ask a couple questions and hope they don't upset anyone.

How hard is it for a new player to become involved in SoD? (Wondering if I'll be purely alone until the very end game as is common with longstanding games as they become top heavy after a while.)

How hard is it for a new player to be SUCCESSFUL in SoD? (This applies to everything, from becoming wealthy, to making good progress, to gaining access to end game, to leveling up)

Is now a good time to join?

I read in another thread that two out of three active developers have left within the past month. How has that effected the server and how do you think it will effect it?

And the big one: How active is SoD? the front page says it has the biggest population of any EQ private server, but I've been on P99 since 2015 and I've never heard of here until now, as I said. Is that boast still accurate?

For a new player the worst part might just be the loneliness of leveling. There aren't many people sub 65, most of them are adept alts(level locked characters killing low level "raid" mobs). As for getting to end game. The problem is 1-65 is basically the tutorial for sod. In fact that might even be wrong at this point. The content grind doesn't stop when you hit 65 nor when you finish aas. you still have experience based progression and a very long list of quests to do for characters to be nearing "completion. As far as I know almost all guilds reside firmly in the top end of the content or near it. They will all want a living person to attend their raids so just by existing and being remotely good at press button you will be desirable even if your character sucks.

Once you hit 65 you can probably make friends because everybody is desperate for anybody to play sod with them. You'll still have boring down time and shit but some guild will want you on the count of being a living being.

Being successful: You will almost certainly have to dualbox and play two characters. You can choose not to but you will probably regret it for most classes since leveling solo much less aa'ing solo(doubly so without gear) is a nightmarish slog for them. You can buy/acquire your way to a much larger tier of gear than you could in the past, if you want to be an antisocial recluse you do not really have to raid and you can achieve quite a lot without doing so. As for money there have been many people who acquired the BIG BUX without actually being at the "end" game of raiding. A lot of the older zones still produce cashmoney if you want to actively invest your time into doing them. Granted I am really out of date and have no clue about some of the newer ones so I could be completely wrong about how good the "higher" end of zones are.

As for progress I cannot really answer this: a lot of the newer quests involve much harder content designed for far more powerful characters. There is still a lot of "old" world content for you to do that still remains relevant afaik. Much of which can be done solo/duo but you will eventually need friends for a number of key things(certain quests, relic spells, getting certain clickies). I know some people(meso) were running pick up raids so its possible to get stuff done without a guild.



Is now a good time to join?

I read in another thread that two out of three active developers have left within the past month. How has that effected the server and how do you think it will effect it?

And the big one: How active is SoD? the front page says it has the biggest population of any EQ private server, but I've been on P99 since 2015 and I've never heard of here until now, as I said. Is that boast still accurate?

Is now a good time to join: Its up to you and if you like the everquest style of game. You said you played p99 so you should understand the concept here. Everything is a massive time sink. SOD has some really nice content hidden about it, I would even say some of the raids were more enjoyable than shit I saw on modern mmorpgs. Due to the nature of the game you still have the sense of community that seems to have been forgotten in many more modern ones. If you want to dump a stupid amount of time into learning and playing the game you will ultimately be rewarded.

Developers: One of them was undoubtedly the best content developer the game has ever had and its extremely sad he left. The other one I cannot speak for his content but was an exceptionally cool dude beloved by all and its unfathomable to me how bad things must have been for these people to finally give up. I don't know any of the current staff and I am sure a lot of people will get upset at anybody suggesting anything remotely negative but its bad. The server has always had staff drama even with a lot of it being pointless misunderstandings and tinfoiling. I don't know the full circumstances but it seems like modern staff are still getting off on the "its our sandbox" motto banning people for seemingly trivial shit despite the community being a fraction of what it once was.

Population: That was true in 2010 or so, and has not been true for a very long time. The most people I saw online recently was around 100 on /who all during weekend primetime. Remember many people are dualboxing so the actual player count could just be 50. Awkward hours during the day/late at night are basically near dead.

At this point I cannot recommend anybody play shards of dalaya. The glory days are gone and whats left is really embarrassing and mostly sad. I really wish somebody would write a tell all about just what goes on in the staff department because you have to wonder how you could go from 500+ active players to about 50 over a few years. Meanwhile p99 still sits at 1000+ on primetime.

TL;DR Massive time investment required to get places in this game with a very questionable future.
 
I think Otcho's response is a good brief description of the good points in SoD, the realistic struggles of playing the game, and the frustrations the server is facing.
 
Otcho's pretty spot on but I would throw the caveat that leveling to 65 is pretty fun, especially if you stop for adepts and hang out a bit. 65 and on without people to play with is a pretty big slog though. You just kind of have to put yourself out there and make friends since a lot of the people playing now are higher tier and hope for the best. Still kind of sad Fuwok never finished his round of adepts due to the adept guild blowing up but maybe one day they'll be complete.

But there's a lot of fun stuff hidden here, it's just finding the right people to do it with. Finding a couple friends to do lowbie stuff with and (maybe) fucking off when you realize the mountain you have to climb to catch up to people is worth a month or so. It's one of the boons and banes of the server: you won't run out of things to do for a long time at least?
 
Some very helpful words and some also very saddening ones.

After absorbing everything said here and thinking about it, I am left with the very sad feeling that I have missed out on something truly amazing. I love EQ and the thought of discovering a completely new adventure with content that makes people extremely happy only to find out I've missed the boat is very disheartening.

I think I will learn about SoD. I will read its Wiki, read its forums and keep an eye on things in case they ever do anything like a server reset, or population somehow miraculously spikes, but I wont start now. With a questionable future I think it best to wait.


One last question if I may: With Daybreak doing TLP's and P99 always talking about Green99 whenever development on Blue99 finally finishes, I'm sure some people have tossed the idea of a reboot around SoD before. What are peoples thoughts on that? Think it would ever happen and if so, would it encourage people to return or drive the remaining few away?
 
Some very helpful words and some also very saddening ones.

One last question if I may: With Daybreak doing TLP's and P99 always talking about Green99 whenever development on Blue99 finally finishes, I'm sure some people have tossed the idea of a reboot around SoD before. What are peoples thoughts on that? Think it would ever happen and if so, would it encourage people to return or drive the remaining few away?

A lot of people have wanted a server wipe or a second server. I think it was a good idea at heart but a lot of people will not give up their characters nor will they be happy with potential fragmentation of the playerbase(this was a big concern when there were hundreds of players). I can't speak for everyone but I think many of the players left due to disagreements with the staff or how they perceive the staff, and they have no interest in coming back.

There was a lot of stupid shit in the past of sod. My posts may come off as overly negative or critical but I love the game and am grateful for the things the staff have done even with all problems the server has had.
 
My brother and me played from 1-65 boxing a group of 4. The content is fun and different. All the zones being connected differently and the main quest are all fun. I would play.
 
A lot of people have wanted a server wipe or a second server. I think it was a good idea at heart but a lot of people will not give up their characters nor will they be happy with potential fragmentation of the playerbase(this was a big concern when there were hundreds of players). I can't speak for everyone but I think many of the players left due to disagreements with the staff or how they perceive the staff, and they have no interest in coming back.

There was a lot of stupid shit in the past of sod. My posts may come off as overly negative or critical but I love the game and am grateful for the things the staff have done even with all problems the server has had.
Your posts have been very insightful. Thank you.
 
My brother and me played from 1-65 boxing a group of 4. The content is fun and different. All the zones being connected differently and the main quest are all fun. I would play.

This is the condition I'd recommend people to play, if you have friends to struggle through the journey with its a lot more enjoyable.
 
Most of what was said before is pretty accurate. Sorry ahead of time if this is too long I sometimes go a bit overboard. maybe someone can summarize better.

This paragraph is a bit of history of the downturn the issues mentioned are not really an issue right now.Think the big downturn in population was with the super buggy releases of SOD 2.0 and 2.5 these left SOD nearly unplayable for a while after their introductions until they were brought to a more stable state and many that left never came back. forget which one but one of them was released around halloween I think and all the devs went on vacation right after the release through december so nobody was around to fix the huge mass of bugs for over a month. example of how bad things got was if someone created a raid in a zone and didn't disband it everyone who entered that zone would be auto added to that raid which prevented grouping and sometimes prevented looting anything and raid chat was visible to people in other zones that were not in the raid. Some players exploited a bug to crash zones to temporarily fix that bug since there was a lack of staff available to reset zones. It took a very long time after that before grouping was brought back to a state where it could be done without worrying something would break it. TLDR: downturn caused by super buggy updates with an extended period of no support.

But SOD isn't horrible(won't say great) for a new player. The community has come up with lots of tricks to get things done with fewer people. Also the wiki is very good documentation much better in my opinion compared to daybreak's.Top thing is don't be in a hurry and check out the Adepts they will make early progression much easier especially since early on you won't have the plat for good bind on equip gear early on that someone with a 65 already would have access to. And don't let the 12-man designation worry you. for most of them you really don't need that many thanks to stuff I will mention below. They can also be a chance to meet people at the low levels. there are usually multiple attempts to kill adepts every day. and there are ways to help others with them even if your toons aren't able to. And if you show you are willing to help on adepts you may very well get flooded with requests from people looking for help. There was also a low level guild that focused some on adepts but I don't know their current status.
Side Note: adept gear increases in strength as you gain xp. this gear will continue to gain xp even if you lock xp to stay a particular level(like if you are farming an adept for a particular piece of gear) so xp you gain during this time is not wasted and this is a way you can become very powerful for your level.

Also I think now would be an excellent time for being a trade skiller many of the major sellers aren't active anymore so there is a currently a big hole to be filled. just a word of warning tradeskills can trigger carpotunnel syndrome pretty bad because of the sheer number of clicks involved. so take it easy. there is no support for the recipe function it is all manual. this was design choice made because tradeskills were balanced around having to do a ton of clicks since they were designed before we switched to the current client(the old client didn't have recipe function to auto combine stuff).

server reset has been tossed around before and every time immediately shutdown as an idea. general thought is it would drive most of the population away. For me personally it would suck really bad(I have an insane number of alts) so I am a bit biased. though I have reduced my activity lately that would throw away multiple years of work on my toons.

A result of such a reset not many would probably think of is suddenly the low end game would probably be significantly harder at least where adepts(level capped raid mobs) are concerned which are a nice source of low level gear. There is a major reason for this that probably doesn't apply to the other EQ based projects.
http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Project_Grin
and
http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Project_Draist

They are public toons created by players for use by other players to kill adepts more easily each specifically geared to be strong against their designated target(frequently called adept hunters or community toons by the player base). These toons help mitigate the need for large groups to kill these targets which can be hard to find with the low server population if you happen to play at a bad time. Also means someone can help you even if the toon they play is the wrong level to help. they can load one of the public toons and problem solved. if a server reset happened these toons would cease to exist until they are replaced assuming there was willingness to replace them.
 
Good job on putting on your halloween masks guys. SoD is the best version of this engine around to date and I have been an avid player and fan of EQ since its release as well as running guild on this server for the last 10 years we would welcome you to come experience it with us.
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If there's anything I've seen in this server is that the population goes up and down and up and down. I don't take it too seriously and I just appreciate the game and what I can get from it. And in the regard, it is fantastic and it's the best emulator I've played on and am playing on. It's always a good time to join, but you just have to pace yourself. People come and people go, just have fun and if you can get a RL friend to play with you all the better.
 
My advise to new players, would be to start with Adept hunting.

Go to wiki.shardsofdalaya.com, search for 'Adept'.

From here you basicly get access to 2 vital informations.
1. The targets and their loot.

2. Hunter info.

So make a lvl 1 char, go to one of the two lvl 1 adept, load a lvl 1 hunter, get some loot. ect.
 
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Try it out. It's a super fun and rewarding game. Since it is free, what is there to really lose???
 
I say give it a go as well. If it's fun keep playing. If/when it's not, stop. No reason why the end game has to be the goal and not getting there is a waste of time. If the time you spend playing is enjoyable then that's time well spent.
 
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