EverQuest Players Defeat 'Unkillable' Monster 196
Thanks to Got Game? for their posting discussing the in-game slaying of Kerafyrm, aka The Sleeper, in PC MMO EverQuest. This event, commemorated with a screenshot on the site of one of the guilds involved, is notable because the players "...killed what Sony Online Entertainment intended to be unkillable. But rather than actually make it untargetable, Sony just gave it a hundred billion hitpoints. For those non EQers out there a reference scale: a snake has about 10 hitpoints. A dragon has about 100,000. A god has 1-2million." So, it took "close to 200 players almost 4 hours to beat the thing down into the ground", after an earlier failed attempt where the guilds "beat it down to 27% and then it mysteriously disappeared. Without dying. It seems that one of the Game Masters at SoE reset the zone because 'they thought the encounter might be bugged'."
Unkillable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unkillable (Score:2)
Something tells me this RPG needs more cows falling from the sky and killing munchkiners... but that would assume there's any sort of real DMing going on in the first place.
Re:Unkillable (Score:5, Funny)
No Kerafyrm, no moon blowing up, no mass destruction with a T-25 Space Modulator.
Re:Unkillable (Score:2)
Reminds me of a CS Lewis story....
Re:Unkillable (Score:2)
That creature has stolen it!
Re:Unkillable (Score:5, Interesting)
They gave Sleeper total immunity to spell damage and an insane ammount of hit points and an insane regeneration rate. Apparently, it was vulnerable to summoned creatures thus all the magic users who could, made them.
Sleeper was weaker, but upgraded a couple expansions ago and then he was wakened on virtually every server. This one server may well be the last holdout - no one woke him there. Time passed. Sleeper was not upgraded, but players were.
Thus the inevitable happened.
As for invulnerability, they can make a creature untargetable - and thus unkillable. I suppose you could argue that some kind of area of effect attack would injure it, but Sleeper is/was immune to spell damage...and that doesn't leave much.
I have no problem with just having a really nasty monster in the game, but they should have planned for it to be killed and given it loot. Best loot from Velius expansion, which I guess would seem a bit gimpy now, would have made people think more highly of the development team, because at least they had thought it out.
It goes to show how much time these people have on their hands. Perhaps more things like this could be introduced with commensurate loot.
This was on a PvP server, by the way, so all those people spent all that time in close proximity to one another and at any time they could have started smacking each other. They didn't. It is a great feat of organization and dedication.
Further, after the first time they got the guy down to 27% health and the zone was reset, the people were all given complete resurections (e.g. death with no losses) by a GM *and* a few points (called AA points or alternate advancement points) to make up for all the losses they took in those initial deaths. That was pretty kind of the GM's...given the fact that they probably brought the zone down intentionally to prevent the people from killing it.
I think there was a quote at the time Sleeper was upgraded that it would take so many people to take it down that the zone would crash - and that was probably true at that time. Perhaps it would have taken, say, 600 people, and that will bring down zones in Everquest, I think. (A zone is just sort of a patch of virtual space. All space is divided into "zones".)
Re:Unkillable (Score:4, Funny)
It's just a classic example of security through absurdity.
When will people learn that THIS NEVER WORKS.
Re:Unkillable (Score:2)
It's just a classic example of security through absurdity.
When will people learn that THIS NEVER WORKS.
Speak for yourself. Nobody else knows that you have to dance a flamenco before you open my wallsafe.
Re:Unkillable (Score:2)
They made an attempt to give it what they perceived to be just that. High regen rate and high hit points and certain immunities.
Probably making it invulnerable would have triggered it to relate to the world in a manner they did not want. Such as its ignorance of attacks since attacks could never harm it.
Alternatly, they wanted to see what would happen. I assume the programmers enjoy the game as well.
Seems though as if this was a mistake they were
Re:Unkillable (Score:1)
Re:Unkillable (Score:2)
Sorry for being nitpicky.
Problem with this (Score:2)
Now, one could go through the code and change ALL those lines of code, just to accomodate this creature... or they can just assign it a high number. The design decision was reasonable, and hey, the outcome of the effort of these players is only a good thing. It's a nice story for all the players involved. After all, we know EQ players give up their pathetic real lives in favor of their EQ virtual
Re:Problem with this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Problem with this (Score:2)
if (IS_UNKILLABLE(monster) && monster.hp < monster.maxHp) { monster.hp = monster.maxHP; }
Sure you can (Score:3, Funny)
Something tells me you haven't played many fantasy RPGs...
Look out! There's a lich behind you!
Raising the bar (Score:3, Insightful)
Course this will probably mean 'we need 2000 people for this one guys' for some MMO gamers..
Re:Raising the bar (Score:1)
algorithm for hit points (Score:5, Interesting)
i think it's pretty d*d funny that the one thing gameplayers could agree on for an in-game large-scale social goal was to thwack the monster meant to be part of the permanent landscape. Somewhere, an executive is going mad under their desk, whispering things about a revolution...
i wonder whether such things will be deliberately introduced into future games, as a quiet little way to increase teamwork?
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:1)
it had 300 hp and couldn't be killed until it was at -100 it regenerated 20 HP a round. and after all that you had to use a wish (which required the DM/GM to grant) to actually kill it. so maybe SoE will take a lesson from that and require that a GM be required to defeat the next "impossible" character. that way at least someone is responsible for it dying.
Side not
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:3, Funny)
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:5, Interesting)
But, honestly, the best way to do these types of things (used to code for MUDs (text-based predecessors to MMORPGs)) is to have an 'infinited hp' code. Like 0 hp means unconscious, and -1 hp means death... so -2hp means "unlimited hps". So you do a simple check when you are hit for damage....
if( target.hp == -2 ) then target.hp = -2;
else target.hp = target.hp - damage;
Simple as that.
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:1, Insightful)
What you want is a flag: if (!target.invulnerable) target.hp -= damage;
Sure, it uses at worst four bytes more memory per entity. But we're talking modern harware here, not Commodore 64.
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
As an example, what if you suddenly want to actually be able to use negative life for some reason? Perhaps you
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:5, Interesting)
In this particular instance, they set a no_kill flag for LB, but he logged off. When he logged back on the flag was reset, and the dev in charge of the event (Grimli if I recall correctly) forget to turn it on again.
LB was killed by a single blast of a fire (wand or scroll, I don't remember) not some really large amount of HP. other than the no_kill flag LB was actually a pretty weak char.
Further, killing of LB was a goal in pretty much EVERY incarnation of Ultima, including cool events that happened if you did so, so it should have been no suprise that it happened in UO.
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:5, Informative)
The servers had just been taken down to prepare for the huge influx of players for the speech Lord British and Lord Blackthorne were giving throughout Britannia. When the servers came back up, I strolled through Britain with Helios, my fellow guild member. We headed to Blackthorne's castle where the first speech was being given. LB, Blackthorne, and their jesters were up on a bridge orating to the masses. Unfortunately I wasn't playing my mage character, so casting spells from a spellbook was out of the question. Luckily my character was a good thief who had high "stealing" skill. I desperately searched the backpacks of those around me and eventually came upon a fire field scroll. After that it was pretty simple, I just cast the scroll on the bridge and waited to see what would happen. Either LB or Blackthorne made the comment "hehe nice try", can't recall exactly who. It was a humorous sight and I expected to be struck down by lightning or have some other evil fate befall me. Instead I heard a loud death grunt as British slumped to his death. After that it was just pure mayhem, Blackthorne or another force summoned 4 daemons into the castle and people were dying left and right.
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
The code to cause damage should be:
monster.takeDamage(damageAmount);
And then you have:
class Monster {
public void takeDamage(int damageAmount){
hitpoints = hitpoints - damageAmount;
}
}
class SomeUnkillableMonster extends Monster {
public void takeDamage(int damageAmount) {
}
}
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
That's no good - every time you create a new creature, you have to modify the code for the server. Much better to have the creatures be data-driven.
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
No, because that way you'd be wasting the rest of the negative range of a signed int. It'd be better to have some flags in a seperate variable, such as an unsigned char with 1 being unconscious, 2 being dead, 1 & 2 being unreviveably dead, and 5 other flags. That way, you can use an unsigned int for HP and not worry about what values are in there.
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
Re:algorithm for hit points (Score:2)
Honestly, I'd have an object with flags and pretty things like that, cause I'm quite partial to good architected OOP. I just used my quick algorthim as an alternative to something already in place that didn't design these ideas into it. I'd add a complete function of code for damage, but I'd rather just get m
Everquest players.... (Score:5, Funny)
The Result? (Score:4, Interesting)
While it is all good and well that they bonded together to put the smack down on him, is there anything unfathomably cool to show for it?
Re:The Result? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Result? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Result? (Score:2, Funny)
Also, your weapons and armor are obviously in no need of upgrade if you killed the toughest creature in the game world. What do you want, a hat with a feather in it?
Some people just don't get the concept... (Score:2, Redundant)
Sometimes the engine won't let you... (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to make mods for X-Wing vs TIE Fighter; admittedly, the available tools were all reverse-engineered, so we never really knew for sure what the engine was capable of, but it was pretty limited in areas Totally Games (the developers) hadn't needed.
One of the early XWvTF missions that used add-on models was the Death Star trench run from A New Hope. The Death Star was represented by a square something like a hundred miles wide, with a trench running across it (10 polygons making up 5 rectangles - "ground" to the left, "ground" to the right, and two sides and a floor for the trench). A few other mod makers (including me) used the same mesh as a convenient representation of "the ground" in other ground-based scenarios.
It turned out that the XWvTF engine didn't have a form of invincibility that was useful; the "invincible" flag in mission files actually meant "no collision detection", and flying down the Death Star trench pursued by TIE fighters would be no fun if you flew straight through it whenever you should have crashed, so people usually just gave it a few million points of hull strength instead.
In the sequel, X-Wing Alliance, "invincible" was implemented in a much nicer way: invincible ships could get hit, they could lose shields, they could even be seriously damaged (slightly alarming in one mission where you fly alongside Luke Skywalker), but they never dropped below 1% hull strength.
(If you still play XWvTF or XWA, see my linked homepage for some old custom models and an XvT mission pack)
Re:Sometimes the engine won't let you... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Some people just don't get the concept... (Score:4, Insightful)
How do they say?
Difficult things become impossible if we don't try them.
So they tried ;-).
Regards, Martin
I love this though... (Score:2, Interesting)
One question... (Score:1)
If this monster has been in the game since the games inception, how does it get it's hitpoints back? When no players are in the immediate vicinity (ie: viewable) of it?
In my experience in these types of games, if i get into a fight with a monster, then die/give up against it, it will then wander around with the remainder of its hit points until it dies.
Re:One question... (Score:2)
Reading the article, it appears the monster spawns as part of some quest, does his thing, and then vanishes forever. So you only get one shot at killing it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:One question... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:One question... (Score:1)
However, Kerafym doesn't hang out somewhere waiting to be beat on. Waking the Sleeper is a serverwide event even if you don't kill him, and you only get one chance to ever see him.
MMORPG challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
Half the articles on here are about how designers want to create camraderie amongst players and keep them from griefing newbies. Here's a secret-- give them a challenge, something that they can't do, then wait and see how long it takes. And on a PVP server too, bravo.
On an old MUD I used to play the designers created quests that were insanely hard to crack. People would spend hours trying to figure them out. New games rarely have this sort of thing-- even the high level EQ quests are waaaay too straightforward and don't require any brainpower.
I suppose it just costs too much to have to make unique quests that are reworked after being solved.
Re:MMORPG challenge (Score:5, Interesting)
*grin* I learned that to make a decent quest on AnotherMUD I had to make it exceptionally tough - and I learned the hard way. Nothing like seeing the players swarm over hours of preparation in no time at all, and having it go to waste.
I only managed to make one quest that was tougher than the players, and I recompensated everyone who tried it - I thought getting to the final creature was insanely difficult and the final creature itself was virtually impossible, I had to log off for a bit... When I came back all the surrounding creatures had been slaughtered, but the final creature had a big chest full of corpses and equipment from all the players who tried and failed.
The important thing any game designer should remember is to NEVER underestimate the players. Some people will go to incredible lengths to achive the impossible and go that extra mile. For an example see the Lytha way [lytha.com] for Thief: The Dark Project.
People are crazy. ;)
-- Pete.
Re:MMORPG challenge (Score:5, Interesting)
- A melee-only Sorceress whose name I forget: her primary spell was Teleport (for targeting purposes), with Enchant (extra damage) in a secondary role
- Gunter, the Barbarian who wanted to be a wizard: a Barbarian with no melee ability whatsoever, using only warcries and the fire spells provided by the items he was wearing
- Maldar the Magnificent, the compassionate, pacifist Necromancer: completed the game without killing a single monster, except those that had to die in order to complete quests (quest bosses and so on). His primary spells were Bone Wall (summon a wall), Bone Prison (trap a monster), and Dim Vision (target monster can't see).
Re:MMORPG challenge (Score:2)
Re:MMORPG challenge (Score:2)
All I can say is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All I can say is... (Score:1)
Flawed Thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, the above ideas are based on the assumption that the game rules are followed. Exploits and other rule-breaking techniques throw everything out the window.
Kinda like the Matrix... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Kinda like the Matrix... (Score:5, Funny)
Uhhh, well (Score:2)
Also, had the developers wanted, they could simply make the thing invincible. They could give it an infinite amount of hit points, make it untargatable, make it immune to all forms of damage, etc. It's not hard to make truly incincible enemies that obey the laws of the system of a video game.
Like mnay of the NPCs in Star Wars Galaxies. Guns will not fire at them, (the game just fails to respond to the attack command if they are targeted), sp
Storyline Problems (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll be interesting to see how they rewrite the quest/story to relfect the realities of the situation....
Re:Storyline Problems (Score:5, Informative)
The majority of Dragons have storylines that they are apart of but they get killed all the time.
(I am a recovering EverCrack addict, clean over a year)
Re:Storyline Problems (Score:2)
Re:Storyline Problems (Score:2)
so they beat the unbeatable character (Score:4, Funny)
If you give it hitpoints (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my DMs was fond of saying: "If you give it hitpoints, the players will kill it" when describing god design. I guess he was right...
Re:If you give it hitpoints (Score:2)
1) Regen. Say, 1000HP/round
2) Really good damage. Kills with one hit.
3) A decent mass destruction weapon. Boom, and everyone's fried.
4) Some other good stuff. Like, reflect damage. A player receives just as much as he causes. Or paralysis. Or plainly number of 'wish' spells. Your god wishes "I want them all to die now." and good bye.
Re:If you give it hitpoints (Score:2)
1)Regen. Say, 1000HP/round. Create a spell of vampric regeneration, cast it on the god. If the god regenerates, he takes damage.
2) Really good damage. Kills with one hit. Easy...mirror image, illusions, temporal displacements, vampric regeneration...lots of ways to avoid combat damage. Or, just bring alot of people with you.
3) Mass destruction weapon Any mass effect spell should at least allow a saving throw. If not, then its in the realm of "impossibility" to ki
Re:If you give it hitpoints (Score:2)
2) 1:1 hit exchange rate. Needed 80.000 hits to kill the God. Needed 200 hits to kill all 200 attackers, needed another 1000 hits to kill all their creations.
3) You get 20 second warning to abandon the blast area. Then everything gets fried. Say, if you're alone, you can do that. If you are with a group of 200 people, they won't all just squeeze through narrow exit door, maybe 20 % will run, 10% will teleport away, 1% with really uber resistance stuff will survive on-site
Re:If you give it hitpoints (Score:2)
Charge of the Heavy Brigade (Score:5, Interesting)
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All into the Impossible
Rode almost two hundred.
"Forward, the Heavy Brigade!
"Charge the dragon!" they said:
Into the Impossible
Rode almost two hundred.
2.
"Forward, the Heavy Brigade!"
Was any wizard dismayed?
Not though all guildsmen knew
Someone had blundered:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to go and try:
Into the Impossible
Rode almost two hundred.
3.
Dragon to right of them,
Dragon to left of them,
Dragon in front of them
Fumed and thundered;
Stormed at with sword and shell,
Boldly they fought and well,
Fought with old Kerafyrm
Fought at the the mouth of Hell
Fought almost two hundred.
4.
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed spells they turned from air,
Pelting the Dragon there,
Charging a Fortress, while
All the world wondered:
Plunged into fire-breathed smoke
Through 2 billion hit points they broke;
Dragon unkillable
Reeled from their mighty stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they returned back, but not
With a bit of loot
No rust-sword for the bold
Almost two hundred.
5.
Quiet to right of them,
Quiet to left of them,
Quiet behind them
No mighty thunder.
No "Jolly good!" and "well!"
No grand applause to tell
How they had fought so well
Came, killed old Kerafyrm
Came, did the Impossible.
All that was left for them,
For almost two hundred, then,
Was burnt Dragon.
6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Dragon Slayers,
Nearly two hundred!
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Re:Charge of the Heavy Brigade (Score:2)
Re:Charge of the Heavy Brigade (Score:2)
"Too much free time" is composing an epic poem about it.
If I could hook up a generator to Tennyson's grave I could power Manhattan, with enough left over to drive a computer to post a "Way to go" comment.
risk/reward EQ style (Score:1)
3+ hours for nothing but posterity.
Re:risk/reward EQ style (Score:5, Insightful)
You should probably consider thinking along these lines for your REAL life, too. ie. doing work that doesn't pay in dollars can often mean more than...
Re:risk/reward EQ style (Score:2)
I bet... (Score:2, Informative)
Reminds me of the game Cranium (Score:5, Insightful)
The rules are so pathetically thin that situations come up with no ready answers in the rules, so we make it up. Consequently, everyone I know plays the game a little diffently.
I had the inspiring idea during Sculptorades (where you sculpt your clues in plasticene) that I could spell the answer out in the clay. Of course, the rules say nothing about this.
People will always try to achieve the impossible or seemingly impossible.
Wow (Score:2)
What kind of monster has 100 billion HP? (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of "Harry" (Score:4, Interesting)
100 billion hitpoints? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:100 billion hitpoints? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:100 billion hitpoints? (Score:2)
Mantissa bits eh?
-----------------
The part of a floating point [reference.com] number which, when multiplied by its radix [reference.com] raised to the power of its exponent [reference.com], gives its value. The mantissa may include the number's sign or this may be considered to be a separate part.
(1996-06-15)
Source [reference.com]: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, 1993-2003 Denis Howe
-----------------
Ya learn something new every day...
Rounding Errors (Score:2)
I've used it extensively to process time tags, which are often larger than 32-bits.
if an architecture is 32 bit... (Score:2)
Re:100 billion hitpoints? (Score:2)
Re:100 billion hitpoints? (Score:2)
so if EQ is using a 64-bit integer, then why didn't they just use MAX_INT_64 or whatever? They are probably using some arbitrary precision integer available in their database backend.
The Sleeper Must Awaken (Score:3, Funny)
Ebay!! (Score:4, Funny)
Because it is there (Score:3, Insightful)
"Nearly impossible" = "possible".
Re:Because it is there (Score:2)
Give it stats ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kleedrac
Oh there's always a way. (Score:2)
Approx 14-16th level party vs like 26-28th level spellcaster. This was supposed to be a "plot" encounter where the DM smacked us around a bit before having our asses saved by divine providence. Unfortunately it was his broken NPC that needed saving.
After a few minutes of stalemate with the party hiding in an antimagic field set up by my cleric cohort and my paladin and the others figuring out that running outside it, flyi
It's good to know... (Score:2)
This is how it should be (Score:2)
The point, in MMOG especially, is that having something possible, but very difficult actually serves a role beyond him just being there. In this case it united an entire server.
Making games realistic whereas nothing is invincible makes them better (in my opinion).
If I had it my way, as a character, I could destroy whatever it is I wanted. Obviously this holds
Re:Those were the days. (Score:5, Informative)
1) This happened during betatesting, before the game went live.
2) Lord British died, not through the guy exploiting a bug in the client, but because British's "Invulnerability" flag had gotten lost during a reset.
3) He was not banned from UO, he was banned from their beta testing, since he had (unrelated to killing Lord British) exploited bugs in the client without reporting them.
http://www.aschulze.net/ultima/stories9/beta.ht
(Or google for 'ultima online killing lord british')
Re:Those were the days. (Score:2)
Re:Those were the days. (Score:2)
Of course, the Lord's justicars having a) summoned evil creatures and b) having the "kill them all and let god sort them out" attitude promptly cause a whole bunch of the roleplaying types to say "well, our characters just wouldn't support Lord British anymore".
Re:Balmung of the Azure Sky & (Score:2)
Re:100 billion? Unlikely. (Score:2)