Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Kerafyrm in Pantheon?

    • 626 posts
    December 29, 2016 6:49 PM PST

    The guild Blood of the Spider on The Rathe server was the first guild system-wide to kill Ventani (the fourth warder) on July 28, 2001, and therefore wake the sleeper. The event caused a stir on the server when Kerafyrm went into multiple zones, including Skyshrine, killing everyone and everything in his path.

    On November 15, 2003, on the Rallos Zek PvP server, the three top guilds (Ascending Dawn, Wudan, and Magus Imperialis Magicus) assembled over 180 players with the intent to wake and kill The Sleeper. This was in response to an attempt to wake The Sleeper by an Iksar monk named Stynkfyst, who partnered with the largest random-pk guild of the time. Having been a former member of uber-guild Ascending Dawn, he had the knowledge the random pk guild needed to wake The Sleeper. The top guilds did not assemble their forces until word of Stynkfyst’s intentions had spread, and it became clear that he intended to wake The Sleeper, forever preventing future guilds from farming the old loot table. Until this point, waking The Sleeper had not been seriously considered by any guilds, as it was believed that waking The Sleeper would make the offending guild’s players kill-on-sight to the other guilds of the server. After 3 hours and 15 minutes, at 26% health, Kerafyrm disappeared (despawned). The players talked with the EverQuest Game Masters, and there was a general consensus that a bug had caused the problem, although some suggested (backed by statements from one GM) that higher-ups at SOE had purposely despawned Kerafyrm, because it was not intended to be part of the story.

    The following day, the players logged in to find that Kerafyrm was back in his “sleeping” state, ready to be triggered again. There was also an apology on the official EverQuest forums from SOE, explaining that they had stopped the encounter because they feared the players were engaging the boss in an unintended manner. Although annoyed (the players pointed out that the reasons SOE gave could not have occurred, and felt lied to), they attempted to battle Kerafyrm once again.

    On November 17, 2003, after a nearly 3-hour battle, Kerafyrm was defeated. He had between 100 million and 400 million hit points, likely around 250 million (most EverQuest bosses have 2 million at most), was immune to all spells except wizard’s manaburn spell and Shadow Knight’s Harm Touch, possessed two death touch abilities (abilities that automatically killed players), and attacked players for 6999 damage per swing. By using the cleric’s epic weapon and other resurrection spells, the players were able to bring their dead characters back into the battle faster than Kerafyrm could kill them all.

     

    For those EQ junkies like myself who might remember this day. You may remember how insane this was... Something seen as impossible became possible and took an entire server of top tier players coming together to make it so. I would love to see something like this in Pantheon. Something so hard, so extreme that it's seen as impossible... until it becomes possible. 

    • 1618 posts
    December 29, 2016 7:01 PM PST

    Maybe can all raid Kilsin!

    • 2419 posts
    December 29, 2016 9:44 PM PST

    I got killed in Skyshrine when Kerafyrm was wakened on Lanys.  Then the server crashed if memory serves.  That entire raid design was stupid.  Why?  Because it demonstrated one thing which you see people whining like babies about on these forums:  Denial of content.  Sleepers Tomb was all about denial of content.  Those few guilds who made it there sooner, rather than later, decided to deny everyone else on the server access to that content by waking the Sleeper and taking away everything that zone once offered.

    Yes, the zone was changed, all new NPCs and loot tables.  Some would say that is a good thing.  Others would say having the zone changed forever due to the actions of just a few is selfish and short sighted. I've always felt that everyone who plays the game should be able to experience all the content so long as they put in the appropriate level of effort.  Zones like Sleepers Tomb give preferential treatment to those who either started months/years earlier or progressed faster.

    • 89 posts
    December 29, 2016 10:59 PM PST

    I didn't play Everquest on PC in 2003 (I was on EQOA at the time) but I remember the Tuesday in my chemistry class when a friend of mine told me what had happened the previous day like it was last week.

    I say yes to allowing pretentious players the chance to not let sleeping gods lie.

    • 166 posts
    December 30, 2016 3:41 AM PST
    I would say yes to unique or pseudo unique bosses. With pseudo unique I mean they can be summoned more than once but to summon them requires a lot of effort.

    And I like real strong bosses. Bosses where one raid is not enough, bosses who need nearly the whole server to defeat them. And of course it should be epic fights, which last for hours.
    • 780 posts
    December 30, 2016 3:48 AM PST

    I miss having to worry about trying to get gear before it was nerfed or removed from tables and I think having to worry about getting content done before it becomes unavailable is also a good thing.  I'd love to see similar encounters in PRF.

    • 86 posts
    December 30, 2016 5:23 AM PST
    Lesson learned.

    Ok 2 things here. 1. Make at least 1 raid mob 'unkillable' in current era, not hard, not 2 guilds, but not invincible either. The whole server could maybe coordinate it, maybe.

    Second, and this one needs to be one of those "only if Aradune tanks" things where it literally cannot die, or 3 expansions later.
    • 318 posts
    December 30, 2016 6:10 AM PST

    There was also an apology on the official EverQuest forums from SOE, explaining that they had stopped the encounter because they feared the players were engaging the boss in an unintended manner. Although annoyed (the players pointed out that the reasons SOE gave could not have occurred, and felt lied to)...

    What was the reason SOE gave?

    • 37 posts
    December 30, 2016 7:45 AM PST

    Vandraad said:

    I got killed in Skyshrine when Kerafyrm was wakened on Lanys.  Then the server crashed if memory serves.  That entire raid design was stupid.  Why?  Because it demonstrated one thing which you see people whining like babies about on these forums:  Denial of content.  Sleepers Tomb was all about denial of content.  Those few guilds who made it there sooner, rather than later, decided to deny everyone else on the server access to that content by waking the Sleeper and taking away everything that zone once offered.

    Yes, the zone was changed, all new NPCs and loot tables.  Some would say that is a good thing.  Others would say having the zone changed forever due to the actions of just a few is selfish and short sighted. I've always felt that everyone who plays the game should be able to experience all the content so long as they put in the appropriate level of effort.  Zones like Sleepers Tomb give preferential treatment to those who either started months/years earlier or progressed faster.

    I was also on Lanys when this happened. Ahh. The infamous Conquest debacle was fantastic. For anyone who doesn't know:

    "Before the awakening of Kerafyrm (the Sleeper) in EQ, a guild named Conquest made an attempt on the final warder hoping to awaken the Sleeper. Unfortunately, by all accounts they used some exploitation of the z-axis, the difference between being on land and being in water, and the affects that those have on monster summoning to deal a majority of damage and/or develop huge amounts of aggro on the MT without ever taking damage in return.I'm not sure the details of it were ever really cleared up, but the guild was dissolved, all members were suspended, and IIRC a few were banned.

    The kicker to the story is that a GM showed up in the middle of the exploit and tried to stop it but inadvertantly set off the awakening of the Sleeper script. Unfortunately for Verant, the script hadn't yet been finished. So instead of a Prismatic dragon, out pops this giant human model that starts rampaging around the zone. The Sleeper script triggers effects in several different zones when it is working correctly" 

    CQ formed back up later and continued to be way ahead of the server for progression all the way post-PoP before migrating over to WoW i believe. Not in contact with anyone from the guild anymore. 

     

    ON-Topic:

    Totally onboard with this, but i can see people being salty about the concept of ruining the content for other guilds. I wasn't in a raiding position during Velious unfortunately, so it didn't affect me. Had I been, I may feel differently about this. 

    • 36 posts
    December 30, 2016 8:25 AM PST

    If it has a stat block, we can and will find a way to kill it, otherwise, keep the mobs you want alive, yet attackable, invlunerable, and make that plot-armor obvious to the players.

    I personally don't like attacking and seeing 'Dodged!' or 'Invulnerable!' because it breaks immersion, so if you are going to have any scripted bosses, do make sure they are done cleanly, and if you don't want your god to die, make that very, very clear.

    The reason why the Sleeper story is as popular as it is, is because it was an unintended feature yet not a bug. Killing a scripted boss is never intended, especially when the story is that it TPKs you then the story progresses. The possiblity of a dev team ever letting this happen again, unintentionally, is very, very low... especially because this story acts as a good reminder that people will try to break your game in ways you won't think of.

    Basically, even if the Dev team made a boss akin to the Sleeper and his overpoweredness, I don't think it will mean the same thing if we kill it. It would be cool if superbosses existed, but the Sleeper kill was something legendary across all MMOs and can't be just 'duplicated' and expected to have the rippling effect the Sleeper's kill had.

     

    Let the record show I never played EQ, but damn this story is gold. I wish I could have been around when this was a thing that was happening. I love what the determination of a playerbase can do when given the right tools and motivation. The fact that this was even attempted shows that EQ was a very different game when compared to most other MMOs made beyond it... hell, it was very different when compared to most other games. The only other game that I can even think to compare this story to was when a player found a glitch that [FF7 Events] let them keep Aerith alive thoughout the story of FF7, her death is a scripted storyline event, yet players found a way around the story progressing event entirely and completed the game.


    This post was edited by Coda at December 30, 2016 8:44 AM PST
    • 169 posts
    December 30, 2016 9:37 AM PST

    I doubt we will see anything else like this again in MMORPGs as developers wouldn’t allow the sleeper to be killed. There was some room for creative thinking in those days for players that isn’t available now. Everything will go as the developers plan it go in most cases and if it does’t they will likely have a way to lock it down. Personally I loved those days when people could experiment and come up with exploits, but I think we are long past that time.

    • 844 posts
    December 30, 2016 10:15 AM PST

    I was lucky enough to be involved with the original waking of the sleeper. It was not all BotS, I was in a guild called Tindi Losi, which was a guild that was generally BotS nemesis on The Rathe. Always competing for the choice raid targets. Tindi Losi had a number of highly geared and skilled members that were invloved with that Sleeper event. There were also a handful of other players from other guilds involved as well. BotS coordinated and ran the event and had the bulk of members involved.

    By 2003 many original players were long gone from EQ, having moved on to Vanguard. The gear changes and expansions to EQ by then had largely broken game balance.

    Kyrafirm kill was sadly viewed mostly as some huge zerg event using epic weapons in ways Dev's that came after Brad's time had not envisioned. Wash, rinse repeat.

    Vanguard eventually became what EQ was by 2003, after skill based rewards were shown the door, ushering in the new ear of gear imbalances and grinding to win took over.

     

    • 626 posts
    December 30, 2016 11:46 AM PST

    So just to be clear. I see a lot of different points of view. My POV on this event was of someone who just saw an extremely hard fight completed by sure will power to overcome it. My main point here is I would love to see something so hard, and tough that it takes months/years to complete/defeat. Gives us something so big and powerful that at first, it seems impossible to defeat. 

     

    Now I understand The Sleeper was not intended to die in EQ, but I would expect whatever Pantheon gives us be expected to be defeated but not anytime soon. Maybe it drops nothing more than a head to hang in our guild hall or a gives us blood which we use to turn into for a title such as "The Dragon Slayer"... Nothing that changes the game, but just something that shows you did it. You defeated the impossible. Then to top it off.. maybe allow it to only spawn once everyone 6 months or year after dieing, but use something like the Progeny System to make it a little stronger each time. Again it will be made with the intent that it may die eventually, but is not expected to be defeated anytime within the first few years.

     

    I dunno something like this just seems like it adds a little something to the game, and gives you pride in your Server.

    • 89 posts
    December 30, 2016 12:15 PM PST

    zewtastic said:

    By 2003 many original players were long gone from EQ, having moved on to Vanguard. The gear changes and expansions to EQ by then had largely broken game balance. 

    Not trying to be overly critical but Vanguard wouldn't release for another 4 years.  And WoW wasn't yet out.  What was out was FFXI, EQOA, UO, and AO.

    • 36 posts
    December 30, 2016 1:01 PM PST

    Saicred said:

    So just to be clear. I see a lot of different points of view. My POV on this event was of someone who just saw an extremely hard fight completed by sure will power to overcome it. My main point here is I would love to see something so hard, and tough that it takes months/years to complete/defeat. Gives us something so big and powerful that at first, it seems impossible to defeat. 

     

    Now I understand The Sleeper was not intended to die in EQ, but I would expect whatever Pantheon gives us be expected to be defeated but not anytime soon. Maybe it drops nothing more than a head to hang in our guild hall or a gives us blood which we use to turn into for a title such as "The Dragon Slayer"... Nothing that changes the game, but just something that shows you did it. You defeated the impossible. Then to top it off.. maybe allow it to only spawn once everyone 6 months or year after dieing, but use something like the Progeny System to make it a little stronger each time. Again it will be made with the intent that it may die eventually, but is not expected to be defeated anytime within the first few years.

     

    I dunno something like this just seems like it adds a little something to the game, and gives you pride in your Server.

    Your making me think of the Tarrasque when you ask for a super-overpowered 'impossible to kill' monster... who is so rediculous that the only reason why you would even fight them in the first place is boredom from the players hunting it, or boredom from the DM who wants to wrap up the campaign fast.

    Honestly, I'd love to see superpowered monsters exist in Pantheon. Make them well hidden... with puzzles that take a bit of time to solve, no quests to guide you to them, perhaps a name drop from the occasional scholar who has nothin better to do than study ancient mythology... even the devs don't talk about the addition of these creatures until they are finally slain. It's difficult to keep secrets in videogames nowadays, but this is definitely a spot where they can do some cool stuff.

    • 1618 posts
    December 30, 2016 4:27 PM PST

    Don't hide them. Let them wander around. 

    • 37 posts
    December 30, 2016 4:37 PM PST

    The sleeper.......fun times. I dont know that we will ever see the likes of some of thoes days. What i mean is a server wide effort to some degree to try and kill a single mob. I remember how bad of a chore it was for us breaking into Time during the planes of power expansion. I only had to tank the rath council 6 times and after that never again.....not even for real gold.

    The sheer willpower some of the old school raids took was mindblowing. It was not the fights were overly challenging it was geting the massive amount of people to work together on a scale that worked.

    • 1281 posts
    December 30, 2016 10:26 PM PST

    I don't really see a point to adding an "unkillable" mob into the game. However, I do like the idea of adding raid mobs into the game that cannot be killed initially. There were some Kunark, Velious, and Luclin encounters that were so difficult that it took until the next expansion (and the levels and better gear that came along with them) in order to defeat the previous expansion top raid target. I'm OK with that because it always gives players something to work on while waiting for the new expansion and always something to go back to.

    I don't think adding targets you have to go back to is a waste of resources because eventually the content will be consumed. Adding stuff into the game that cannot be defeated would be an actual waste of resources.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at December 30, 2016 10:27 PM PST
    • 1618 posts
    December 31, 2016 5:26 AM PST

    In well designed games, there is raid content that survives an expansion to two.

    • 2886 posts
    January 1, 2017 5:13 AM PST

    Oh my god, I have always been obsessed with the sleeper! I think it would be awesome if Pantheon did something like this. However, I think it's important to not just try to exactly recreate Kerafyrm. Best to leave him immortalized as he is in the past. Don't ruin the nostalgia by trying to bring it back. That whole story is totally perfect and will never happen again because it was so unintended. WoW had a similar idea with Deathwing in Cataclysm that I'm sure was inspired by Kerafyrm. A giant dragon going on a rampage and destroying the world always invokes an absolutely epic feeling. But I believe it does kinda start to lose it's epicness when people start to think, "oh yay... yet another massive unkillable angry dragon..." I'm sure VR can put their own unique twist on this in one of the future expansions if they want to.

    • 1618 posts
    January 1, 2017 12:58 PM PST

    Yeah, not another Dragon. This time, it should be an unkillable, angry Halfling.


    This post was edited by Beefcake at January 1, 2017 2:07 PM PST
    • 780 posts
    January 1, 2017 1:38 PM PST

    I agree that they shouldn't attempt to artificially replicate an encounter like that.  Just need to make the game the best the can make it, and hopefully some naturally epic events will emerge.

     

    I also agree that it would be nice to have an encounter here and there that can survive until the next expansion.

     

    I have to say, I do miss boss mobs being regular-sized humanoids.  Seems like this is more and more rare.  Everything has to be giant to signify how powerful it is...if a boss is human, it turns out he's possessed by a demon, or he's some other shapeshifter.

    • 9 posts
    January 1, 2017 1:38 PM PST

    A bit off topic: but just jumping in and derailing this for a moment to say hello to Senthin and Vandraad, fellow refugees from Lanys! It sounds like we played during the same era. I very much remember the drama you described, though my memory of Conquest goes further back to the days of Soul Assassins. Anyway...

    Oh, just because it is fun to go down memory lane, name this EC /auction "... serious offers only" ;-) be well friends and see you in Terminus!

    -Daevrikk, retired Dark Elf Necromancer from Lanys T'vyl server

    • 844 posts
    January 1, 2017 5:56 PM PST

    Gurt said:

    zewtastic said:

    By 2003 many original players were long gone from EQ, having moved on to Vanguard. The gear changes and expansions to EQ by then had largely broken game balance. 

    Not trying to be overly critical but Vanguard wouldn't release for another 4 years.  And WoW wasn't yet out.  What was out was FFXI, EQOA, UO, and AO.

    Totally correct. It was 2003 when Brad announced the Vanguard project and launched their first version of the forums for the game. I always get that date confused. 

    • 20 posts
    January 2, 2017 12:44 PM PST

    I think what made The Sleeper so interesting memorable was the mystery surrounding it. Nobody knew if it was possible to kill it. Nobody even knew if it had a loot table. All we knew was that while it had astronomical numbers attached to it, they were still real numbers. 

     

    I think there is a ton of potential that could be realized by another Karafyrm-like creature. Not in the way of removing content, but in presenting the playerbase with a godlike entity that leaves those to wonder and speculate. Nothing immerses people in a game more than allowing their mind to fill in the blanks.