Luclin

[Brimacombe]

*Waits for all the knee jerk howls to subside...*

Interesting on the live forums. It is concerning a permanent classic server by the Vocal Minority (R)...

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/permanent-classic-server.2096/page-2

Quote:
"And yet the 'no' vote crowd prevailed when GoD rolled around. I agree with you that we don't have detailed demographic data, but nonetheless this is the only real evidence we have, as opposed to the self-serving speculation on both sides of the argument. The specific argument I was addressing was the idea that Luclin and PoP ruined EQ and that the only reason why the game kept growing is that the overall online community kept expanding. If that was true, then it should have taken awhile for Luclin to open. In fact, that is what the dev's expected -- they said that they were curious whether the community would ever vote to open Luclin. The rhetoric from the classic server crowd took a hit the day Luclin was voted open, whether by one vote or a thousand votes. "

All the board bullying aside. The people spoke. Apparently the players on the server were able to vote, not just the board trolls and the people who brave them to post.

- Brimacombe.

[Duckforceone]

well as i think i stated in that thread, i'll state here too..

when you have people only joining the server to be first, then quitting, then coming back again to be first when new content opens, of course luclin will be voted open.

I would only put any stock in the voting, if people who put in 20+ hours a week for months were able to vote. So those people who left only waiting to come back, were unable to swing the vote, as they do not make up the servers true population.

[Waedawen]

No point in talking about Luclin when we don't even have Velious

Zones are by no means "cleared of anything worth killing" -- the no box rule takes care of that.

100 people go on hiatus from p99 for ever 1 that quits permanently... and that's a problem of content. Kunark has simply been around too long.

There will be more than enough content between the classic, kunark, and velious zones once it opens.

I liked Luclin a lot myself. But what really killed the game was the exponential power creep it brought. For example you could outfit a level 1 in umbral plains no-drop rots and be better equipped than a NToV Raider and have weapons better than (some) epics.

[Brimacombe]

It has been a while for me; Velious introduced AAs, didn't it? I think that is what will keep people interested.

Oh, and by the way, I am really happy that this didn't turn into an explosion thread. I wanted to make my point, but didn't want the railing and frothing that usually occurs when Luclin is brought up in a positive light.

- Brimacombe.

[Duckforceone]

luclin is AA's unfortunately... so no extra fun on this server...

[Brimacombe]

Well, I don't want to grandstand or campaign. I wanted to make my point and I did. That's all I have to say on the subject. At the end of the day I have a blast on this server and I appreciate immensely the work the hosts have put into it. I read somewhere that Rogean mentioned it was more work than he thought it would be, but he is still slugging away so we can have this. Him and the team have been troopers.

I'll see you all when I finally level to cap and I can vie for best in class ;)

-Brimacombe

[shooteneq1]

the biggest problem with the expansions was mudflation. from one expansion to the next items should really only be 10% or so better. with items being up to 100% better than the last expansion you render everything prior to the expansion obsolete.
Imo most people hated luclin so much because it made everything they had worked for so hard junk gear just by killing xp mobs 3 zones into the expansion. This made people angry and bitter. Other than that luclin was actually a good expansion, other than the endless trash mobs they forced on us.

[Sirken]

Nexus(easyports), bazaar, character models, cats on moon, OP gear

all reasons i hate Luclin

[senna]

EQ didnt decline till after PoP

IMO kunark is a worse expansion than luclin entertainment wise

Iksars are incredibly ugly
mobs have huge hps and hit hard
the end-zone VP is a pita to get in
travel is terrible

The only upside was epics, otherwise the entirety of kunark is a wash

Lucing had great leveling zones for everyone, as well as great kiting spots all the way to 60. Easy travel and access, lots of raid targets. Improved selling and lots of cheese, etc. And AA's.. just amazing.

[Duckforceone]

agree Sirken...

but aa's made you able to customize your character a bit more, do things that really made certain classes more fun to play...

like allowing the cleric to actually melee undeads a fair bit....

[heartbrand]

I personally thought VT had some of the coolest clickies in the game /shrug

[heartbrand]

AA's also gave you a reason to keep logging in

[shooteneq1]

Nexus(easyports), bazaar, character models, cats on moon, OP gear

all reasons i hate Luclin

nexus(easy ports)---you still had to wait 15m, boats here are 24m. really not that huge of a diffrence

bazaar---im sorry but that was one of the best thing to happen to eq. its not so bad here as the population is only 500-950 or so, but back then all servers had at least 2k people online during normal play times making ec auctions almost impossible with the massive amounts of fast spam. plus standing around for hours auctioning crap is not my idea of having fun playing a game.

character models---i somewhat agree there, but wasnt there an option to not use them?

cats on moon--theres cats in classic so no big whoop to me

OP gear--i totally agree

[Acillatem]

/agree Sirken.

The Nexus - it wasn't so much that it made things easier, it was the fact it was the first step towards the erosion of the "immersion" factor that was unique to EQ.

Bazaar - like the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, just another thing that slowly eroded the "immersion" factor. It had it's positives, like making shopping easier (I fukin hate EC buy low/ sell high etc), but I hated losing the immersion/community feel of a real live community bazaar vs an automated one.

Character Models - ya they sucked.

Cats on the Moon - was where EQ started to stray from the traditional fantasy Lore ala Lord of the Rings and injected a bit of sci-fi/fantasy. Some people enjoyed that, however I consider myself a traditionalist therefore I did not.

OP Gear - ya, the jump from Velious to Luclin was insane.

Luclin was a 50/50 expansion for me. There were many features I thoroughly enjoyed (AA's, some of the end-game mobs were fun as hell - new spells etc). And then as previously mentioned, there were many features I despised (most already listed, however you can add Mounts (poor implementation), Paludal Caverns (insanely OP XP mod), and Vex Thal (I hope I'm thinking of the right one - insanely loooooong fights on even trash mobs).

I wouldn't mind seeing a "custom" version of Luclin after Velious, but as a standard "classic" ex-pac - I'd vote no.

[senna]

Lets not forget Ssra temple. Probably one of the favorite raid zones in EQ. So much time spent raiding there. So much great loot, cool looking loot no less.

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/0/1992/504957-ssra_01.jpg
http://www.neronetwork.com/eqgallery/image/ssra/ssra1big.jpg
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/scenery/ssratemple-golem.jpg

[Ephirith]

IMO kunark is a worse expansion than luclin entertainment wise


I've never disagreed so hard in my life, but I do like Luclin.

[Brimacombe]

About Senna's post,
I was grumbling to myself mentally just yesterday about how remote everything on Kunark is. Then I decided that Ikkies are isolated from jump by a long ways, and with Kunark being the first expansion, it created a sense of otherness. So I guess I am cool with that.

just an aside,

-Brimacombe

[Thulack]

*Waits for all the knee jerk howls to subside...*

Interesting on the live forums. It is concerning a permanent classic server by the Vocal Minority (R)...

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/permanent-classic-server.2096/page-2

Quote:
"And yet the 'no' vote crowd prevailed when GoD rolled around. I agree with you that we don't have detailed demographic data, but nonetheless this is the only real evidence we have, as opposed to the self-serving speculation on both sides of the argument. The specific argument I was addressing was the idea that Luclin and PoP ruined EQ and that the only reason why the game kept growing is that the overall online community kept expanding. If that was true, then it should have taken awhile for Luclin to open. In fact, that is what the dev's expected -- they said that they were curious whether the community would ever vote to open Luclin. The rhetoric from the classic server crowd took a hit the day Luclin was voted open, whether by one vote or a thousand votes. "

All the board bullying aside. The people spoke. Apparently the players on the server were able to vote, not just the board trolls and the people who brave them to post.

- Brimacombe.

The voting was allowed for toons on the server that were over level 30 i think it was or 40. So if you had 10 toons over level 40 you could vote 10 times. GoD wasnt voted to open on the first vote but if i remember correctly was unlocked 2 weeks later when they voted.

[senna]

I dont think people would be hating on bazaar so much and touting EC trading if 'item linking' a luclin feature, wasnt being used in p99.

just an example of a luclin era feature that is currently enhancing our gameplay and shouldnt even be used in this part of the timeline.

[SirAlvarex]

I think Luclin was the "stepping stone" to the downfall, where PoP was the actual downfall. Luclin might have had some goofy models (which really only annoyed me because half the models were high pixel, and the other half were the crappy kind) and questionable lore, it had some improvements.

I didn't mind the Nexus, and the Bazaar really helped curve inflation on prices. Beastlords were OP, but a nice distraction. And besides the overly generous XP modifiers on the zones on Luclin, the leveling there was alright.

But I never raided Luclin, so I can't say if that was the nail in the coffin.

[kotton05]

i loved luclin. i could just go disappear on the moon for awhile. didnt have to haggle with ec sharks...

[Emphase]

I dont think luclin or PoP was bad, it was after PoP when the downfall occurred imo. PoP was actually one of my favorite expansions for raiding

[SCB]

Only thing I really hated about Luclin was Paludal Caverns making leveling stupid. Can't find groups for alts anywhere else if you're going to get a level an hour + all the way to 30 in PC.

[shooteneq1]

the biggest problem with most expansions is that instead of adding to the existing content like you think an expansion is supposed to, it instead renders all prior content useless.

[Trevalon]

I dunno, I rather like Luclin - some of my favorite EXP zones are on Luclin. I am also one of the crazy ones that liked Luclin models, but that doesn't really effect anyone because you can choose to show them or not.

I also like AA's and still consider Everquest's AA system to be one of the best advancement systems in any MMO.

I also think PoP is the best expansion of any MMO ever. The raiding in PoP is as good as it gets and completely dwarfs pretty much all content prior to it - I honestly think people who like Velious raiding over PoP are slightly crazy.

GoD was the downfall of EQ.

[Swish]

I liked Luclin. I thought Luclin was better than Velious. I'd love P1999 to continue its journey to explore strange new (moons)...

Why was Luclin better than Velious?

- New playable race
- Beastlords added, fantastic class if slightly overpowered.
- The bazaar (I loved it, those of us that had jobs and couldn't sit in EC all day had a way to trade).
- The Nexus (needed as the world was getting too big, and better than waiting for a string of boats).
- Some great raiding content that always seems to be under the radar in people's memories.
- Some escape from the world of kill dragons, kill more dragons...we mashed the keyboard for this dragon's name, ha!
- Some quirky ideas (The Grey, a zone without breathable air!), some weird monsters to kill (some stupid ones, but I liked some of them).
- Obviously, AAs had a massive impact and were a lasting trend on EQ for years to come.

Personally I think the forum mood has dictated that Luclin was a bad expansion because of "cats on the moon"....never heard the phrase til I came to these forums, and whenever anyone mentions why they hate Luclin it includes that phrase. Bandwagoners :p

[enr4ged]

Bazaar is such a no-brainer, that literally EVERY SINGLE GAME since then has had some sort of mechanic for it. You're either not really a gamer or haven't thought it through, if you don't want a Bazaar. It has been the single most grind-destroying structure in MMORPGs since its advent in Luclin, and may be the greatest contribution that EQ has made to the MMORPG genre.

If you mean that by it making the game easier and destroying the feeling of a real community, than yes it was the greatest contribution. And every game has it now because it caters to casual players who don't want to work for their things. It's because of the "auction house" system that so many cookie cutter mmorpg's this day are so easy and really encourage doing things by yourself instead of grouping up. Sorry but that's boring to me. But, it appeals to casuals, and there are more players that like it easy, rather than hard: thus more money for SoE and other MMORPG companies; so it will continue to exist.

[enr4ged]

I dont think people would be hating on bazaar so much and touting EC trading if 'item linking' a luclin feature, wasnt being used in p99.

just an example of a luclin era feature that is currently enhancing our gameplay and shouldnt even be used in this part of the timeline.

True; but you get to a point where you need to decide is a "feature" or "design" non-existant because of the fact that it was a technological limit or something people didn't think of, or does is it a necessary part of the game that created some kind of challenge. There really wasn't much challenge added by not having item links it was just annoying cause you would have to alt tab to see what an item was or type it out.

But I do agree with you some things on this server are not "classic" but they generally were part of the challenge of the game. Maybe the devs are picking and choosing, who knows...

[enr4ged]

i loved luclin. i could just go disappear on the moon for awhile. didnt have to haggle with ec sharks...

I think that's kind of the whole idea behind people not liking luclin, the fact that with the addition of free ports and an "auction house" you lose a lot of what made the game what it was. Having to rely on other people for ports and such...

[Vexiom]

Luclin was a great expansion, although there have been some big negative points made here that I can agree with:

-Gear jump was too large from Velious to Luclin
-The low level zones (read: Paludal Caverns) made classic zones obsolete


AAs were an incredible idea, it gave so much more longevity to the game for me. It also gives high end players a reason to exp grind, and thus gives newer max level players a larger pool of people to group with. And don't forget the fun factor of some of the abilities!

I think a more "classic eq" custom approach to the Luclin expansion could be a real and VERY cool possibility. Do what you must to gear, exp zones, travel, etc. But there is just a massive amount of great content and AAs that shouldn't be left on the table! Devs please consider!

[senna]

Please no custom content

as soon as custom content hits p99 it turns into another EZ server, and the everquest feels go right out the window.

I'd rather have no luclin than a custom frankenstein luclin

[enr4ged]

the biggest problem with most expansions is that instead of adding to the existing content like you think an expansion is supposed to, it instead renders all prior content useless.

Exactly... what was the point of such huge XP mods in the luclin era, were they trying to make the game more casual? Or was it because they wanted people to use the new zones instead of the old ones? Why didn't they either raise the old zones xp modifiers or balance the new ones to the old. It sucked having to level in the luclin zones, was it wrong to like the classic zones so much but be forced to level slower than everyone else? Hell, I didn't even care for the kunark zones that much. I liked velious ones though. I like me some colors in my zones.

[Clark]

Luclin is for sure a top 3 expansion. One of my favorites. Hope to see it here someday.

[VincentVolaju]

I wouldnt mind Luclin, mostly for AAs, gives you something to keep working for, your character is never really "finished" with AAs, its awesome. However, tbh Id prob wouldnt enjoy p99 anymore if there was a bazaar, it killed all buying/selling/trading. Thats one reason why I always come back here, cause I could sit in EC tunnel for hours just making money by buying low, selling high. You just cant do that in any other MMO anymore. Now a days everything just caters to impatient ppl or casuals, which isnt so much of a bad thing, considering now a days theres more casual "gamers", then there is hcore. But trading is how I met a good 50% of the people I know in EQ, some ppl prefer the "I have 100pp, and I want to buy item for 100 off this player made vendor", other people prefer the "I have 100pp, and I want to turn it into 150pp".

Honestly, I think it be pretty cool if they stopped at Velious, but then later down the road just activated AAs. Dont know what that would do to balancing all the classic content, but it would def. give people more of a reason to continue playing and progressing their characters. I dont think people would get bored so easily.

[Decad]

Bazaar - It is convenient and it takes away all the ripoff ass jacks or lamers who try to cut your prices by 20-50%. True it takes away the interaction and to a certain extent the kind folks ( who gives out random stuff to real noobs ) but it really saves lots of time buying selling. Anyone remembers you have to wait in queue to see someone bags of stuff via trade window when some random dude in EC " WTS 3 bags of stuff T1" ?

Paludal - This zone just destroyed the levelling curve and created more newbie whiners who complained that their XP is damn shitty post 50. ( most of my servers back then still level in Sebilis and Velketor post 50 )

Dawnshroud/Netherbian lair - Coupled with paludal, no one else will leave the moon before level 45++. And you get dudes asking you where is Lower Guk, SoldungA/B, Befallen etc because there is no reasons to go those zones anymore apart from farming the occasional item.

AA - Some nice class customization and nice new feats for classes. A everlasting stay on EQ since then. It also made Everquest changed from "Evergrind" to "Evercontinuinggrind" where raid guilds no longer just looked at your level and skill for recruitment but how many AAs you have.

Cats - Just destroyed the medieval feel. But Shar Val is a nice city.

Cities - Shar Val, Sanctus Seru, Katta Castelleum all very nice. However Shadowhaven simply destroyed the need to go back to any starting city anymore. And unless you are a wizard or druid, travelling to and fro from the moon is just a waste of time

Nexus - Boats without the ship, replaced with a black hole. You dont even have the seas to look at while you wait. Instead you have 3 nice stone walls and an NPC dude looking at you while u wait on your ass.

Character models - Crap for many players. The older graphics card at that time all suddenly seemed inadequate.

Raiding - Cool as hell like Velious and Kunark for me. Especially Ssra Temple and Acrylia as well as the Deep. Vexthal is a cool zone but the insane amount of monsters HP is ridiculous.

Gear - Way too OP. You dont even need any gear change pre EP in POP if u had full VT gear. Hell, you could even use just VT gear to reached Potime if your guild is coordinated enough. It was that good.

[fuark]

Can't believe how many people actually like the AA system. Adding abilities is always fun, but adding more grinding to a game is never my idea of adding fun. I enjoy the free roam play time on my characters, especially my 60 druid because I can go do whatever I want when I am on him. Having to log on and constantly have grinding in the back of your mind once you're 60 was never appealing to me in Luclin, and one of the reasons I ended up quitting then (along with the bazaar and the nexus).

One of the many reasons I am glad Luclin will not be added here (not even going to start on the power creep aspect of Luclin).

[Brimacombe]

Please no custom content

as soon as custom content hits p99 it turns into another EZ server, and the everquest feels go right out the window.

I'd rather have no luclin than a custom frankenstein luclin

This.

[Tenlaar]

I think it would actually be pretty cool to have a server keep going through Luclin, even to PoP, with all things "classic" except for about a 25% reduction in item stats across the board for Luclin/PoP gear. Add a little more challenge in this time around. Custom does not have to mean easier.

[rafaone]

Please no custom content

as soon as custom content hits p99 it turns into another EZ server, and the everquest feels go right out the window.

I'd rather have no luclin than a custom frankenstein luclin

+1

Besides that, I liked Luclin and hope we can get to there someday here, even if some features like Bazaar or Paludal have to be fixed (Fixed but NO custom content).

[Thulack]

Can't believe how many people actually like the AA system. Adding abilities is always fun, but adding more grinding to a game is never my idea of adding fun. I enjoy the free roam play time on my characters, especially my 60 druid because I can go do whatever I want when I am on him. Having to log on and constantly have grinding in the back of your mind once you're 60 was never appealing to me in Luclin, and one of the reasons I ended up quitting then (along with the bazaar and the nexus).

One of the many reasons I am glad Luclin will not be added here (not even going to start on the power creep aspect of Luclin).

Most people actually feel like accomplishing stuff on their toons. Basically here once a toon is 60 your done with them other then parking them at camps to farm stuff. AA system extended the life of your toon is basically the way i looked at it.

[Lanzellot]

Iam happy very after velious is finish and that is good so all other addons ruined the game.

[fuark]

Most people actually feel like accomplishing stuff on their toons. Basically here once a toon is 60 your done with them other then parking them at camps to farm stuff. AA system extended the life of your toon is basically the way i looked at it.

Yeah, I guess I just don't feel like I'm done with my toon at 60 just because there's nothing left that I'm forced to grind. I still have fun on him despite not having the game tell me what I need to do.

[Calabee]

i am re-rolling my bard a vah shir if luclin ever hits... ^ ~

[Calabee]

i mean.... look at how sexy a pussy i am.

http://imageshack.us/a/img10/9462/meowykx.jpg

<3

[myriverse]

Grinding was never that important to me. In the 4 years I played live, I only just managed to attain level 60 with one character. By then, there were already AAs, and I wasn't too interested. The social aspect of the game and just "walking the Earth" is what I liked (and I stress the word "walking"--all of those teleporters? Ptooey!). Luclin making Norrath seem small just added to the fun I had. It was great to stare at Norrath in the sky from Luclin.

I liked Luclin more than Velious. Velious just seemed like more of the same, and there was just too much ice. Velks, Ring Wars, and Kael were all I really liked about Velious (well, I think I had one good experience in the Tower of Frozen Shadow once...). I think I even liked LDoN more.

[Swish]

I think I even liked LDoN more.

Agreed! The time limit quests were particularly awesome - its a shame the rewards weren't too spectacular for continual grinding but I wholly enjoyed LDoN :D

Also, Calabee's bard reminds me of all the pink bards that appeared around Luclin or PoP with the armor dyes... not sure what it was about pink bards but Venril Sathir (EU) had a ton of them :p

[Danth]

I hated LDON. The concept was nice, but it came at the height of Sony's greediest period. The result was an expansion composed of modular cut-and-paste instances. The entire thing reeked of cheapness.

I'm dubious as to the effect Alternate Advancement would have on P1999. We have a fairly closed community here (relative to Live during this period) and I suspect it'd turn the lower level game into a ghost town.

Danth

[heartbrand]

Nexus(easyports), bazaar, character models, cats on moon, OP gear

all reasons i hate Luclin

eh, Nexus was really that ez-mode? I found it pretty annoying tbh but this could be fixed by making ports to Nexus one way, i.e., you can get there from the three major spires but the nexus itself won't port you out. Bazaar could be disabled, models could be disabled, cats on moon I'll never understand this is a fantasy game who giev fuk, the gear I thought was tuned for the difficulty of the content which was quite high.

While Luclin may not have been the most exciting expansion, I thought through Planes of Power the game had an awesome lore and feel. GoD and OOW weren't awful but after that I lost interest.

[heartbrand]

I hated LDON. The concept was nice, but it came at the height of Sony's greediest period. The result was an expansion composed of modular cut-and-paste instances. The entire thing reeked of cheapness.

I'm dubious as to the effect Alternate Advancement would have on P1999. We have a fairly closed community here (relative to Live during this period) and I suspect it'd turn the lower level game into a ghost town.

Danth

LDoN was amazing because it allowed you to log in and play within minutes. Before LDoN you were forced to often sit LFG for an hour +, then you had to get there, get COTH'ed or set up, buff up, etc., etc., only for the group to break up shortly after. LDoN offered quick groups of predictable duration where everyone got a reward, and offered the very fun hard mode LDoN's.

[heartbrand]

Luclin was a great expansion, although there have been some big negative points made here that I can agree with:

-Gear jump was too large from Velious to Luclin
-The low level zones (read: Paludal Caverns) made classic zones obsolete


AAs were an incredible idea, it gave so much more longevity to the game for me. It also gives high end players a reason to exp grind, and thus gives newer max level players a larger pool of people to group with. And don't forget the fun factor of some of the abilities!

I think a more "classic eq" custom approach to the Luclin expansion could be a real and VERY cool possibility. Do what you must to gear, exp zones, travel, etc. But there is just a massive amount of great content and AAs that shouldn't be left on the table! Devs please consider!

I personally like zones such as Paludal because they funnel the player base into zones rather than leveling in empty dead zones scattered across.

[Gadwen]

I had a lot of fun in the Luclin-PoP era on Live. Although I do prefer the Classic-Velious game a lot more. I would be hard pressed to say that Luclin and PoP "ruined" Everquest, for me anyway. IMO, the game itself is simply not that impressive from a game play or technical standpoint. It's meeting cool people, and accomplishing goals that I set for myself that keep me playing EQ, neither of which was taken away from me when either of those expansions came out.

[Briscoe]

What people always overlook is the amount of time and effort it is taking nilbog and company to develop Velious. The implementation of Luclin, PoP, or any other expansion will take a commensurate amount of time and effort.

There is much more to it than Rogean simply saying, "Oh yea, we'll open up Luclin now."

[Taboo]

I would be happy bypassing Luclin and just adding in PoP :) Add ports to planes to certain rings around norrath. Make it a portal spell for druids and wizards but make it so they have to be at a certain ring or spire to use it.

I remember reading somewhere that they butchered the AA system so it will not be even an option.

[Danth]

Don't even get me started on Planes of Power. For folks like me who didn't really like raids, it was the absolute worst expansion not only in Everquest, but in the entire history of this genre. From my vantage point that expansion was unredeemable trash.

About the only thing from Luclin I care about is the Bazaar; I hate East Commons. That being said, I'll take the bad with the good, and stopping at Velious is a lot more good than bad. When I take everything as a whole, I feel every expansion past Velious just made the game worse and worse. Heck, the majority of my favorite content is pre-expansion stuff.

Danth

[falkun]

I would be happy bypassing Luclin and just adding in PoP :) Add ports to planes to certain rings around norrath. Make it a portal spell for druids and wizards but make it so they have to be at a certain ring or spire to use it.

I remember reading somewhere that they butchered the AA system so it will not be even an option.

https://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11879

[Noselacri]

Luclin on P99 is a moot point as the server will begin hemorrhaging players a few months after Velious comes out. You see, what each expansion after Kunark does is this: if you don't raid, you're nothing. This is doubly important on this extremely top-heavy server where nobody is content to simply see the sights and be level 43 for months. The wonder and magic of Everquest is long gone and people want to do what they didn't get to do as kids a dozen years ago. Unfortunately, Velious introduces the concept of full separation between normal and hardcore players.

In Classic and Kunark, almost no gear is notrade. Epics, the odd quest item, a few raid pieces and then VP gear, everything else is droppable. Almost all of the best gear in the game is tradeable and you don't strictly have to be in the top guild to get it. You can become an "accomplished player" by trading, by knowing the right people, by RMTing or scamming (hey, it counts for the purpose of this discussion) and any other way you can imagine getting a fungi, Cobalt BP, tstaff, CoF and whatever else is considered top items in the game.

Not so in Velious. Suddenly every piece of "BiS" is from NToV or similar. In fact, the top three best items for each slot will usually be notrade raid drops, and anything less will be considered low-level crap. The gear you can get as a non-raider is suddenly laughable and you are nobody if you don't raid. As we all know, raiding on P99 is tantamount to selling your soul to the devil, and there's a gigantic divide between the TMOish crowd and the rest of the server. With everyone realizing that there's no way for their characters to be comparatively decked out without that unrealistic requirment of becoming the 1%, the whole experience will feel tainted and people will stop playing as this feeling sinks in and comes to permeate the server.

This did not happen back in the day because 1) people didn't know better, 2) the vast majority were satisfied with being unambitious nobodies, and 3) there were tons of servers and you could always find a raid guild somewhere if you wanted, the entire endgame concept was not utterly monopolized by one or two highly exclusive guilds. People await Velious like it'll be some great coming of age for this server, but nobody seems to realize what it did to Everquest and how poorly it fits this server and the way it differs from the great old backintheday. There will never be a question of whether or not to implement Luclin on P99 because there will be less than 100 players left by then.

[Danth]

The wonder and magic of Everquest is long gone and people want to do what they didn't get to do as kids a dozen years ago.

Not everyone on P1999 was a 13 year old twit when EQ was new. I was an adult a dozen years ago, just a somewhat younger one. So were most the folks on my in-game friends list.

I agree that Velious was where Sony began to really cater to the [always whiny] raider minority, but overall it's better to have it than not have it. Even as someone who's largely uninterested in raids I like Velious better than Kunark, if for the class balancing improvements if nothing else. I'm much more accepting of EQ's faults this time around because we players here have the benefit of hindsight--I know what to expect from the get-go. I'm content to be an anonymous nobody, too; it's a nice change after being all too popular in the last couple MMOG's I played.

Danth

[heartbrand]

Luclin on P99 is a moot point as the server will begin hemorrhaging players a few months after Velious comes out. You see, what each expansion after Kunark does is this: if you don't raid, you're nothing. This is doubly important on this extremely top-heavy server where nobody is content to simply see the sights and be level 43 for months. The wonder and magic of Everquest is long gone and people want to do what they didn't get to do as kids a dozen years ago. Unfortunately, Velious introduces the concept of full separation between normal and hardcore players.

In Classic and Kunark, almost no gear is notrade. Epics, the odd quest item, a few raid pieces and then VP gear, everything else is droppable. Almost all of the best gear in the game is tradeable and you don't strictly have to be in the top guild to get it. You can become an "accomplished player" by trading, by knowing the right people, by RMTing or scamming (hey, it counts for the purpose of this discussion) and any other way you can imagine getting a fungi, Cobalt BP, tstaff, CoF and whatever else is considered top items in the game.

Not so in Velious. Suddenly every piece of "BiS" is from NToV or similar. In fact, the top three best items for each slot will usually be notrade raid drops, and anything less will be considered low-level crap. The gear you can get as a non-raider is suddenly laughable and you are nobody if you don't raid. As we all know, raiding on P99 is tantamount to selling your soul to the devil, and there's a gigantic divide between the TMOish crowd and the rest of the server. With everyone realizing that there's no way for their characters to be comparatively decked out without that unrealistic requirment of becoming the 1%, the whole experience will feel tainted and people will stop playing as this feeling sinks in and comes to permeate the server.

This did not happen back in the day because 1) people didn't know better, 2) the vast majority were satisfied with being unambitious nobodies, and 3) there were tons of servers and you could always find a raid guild somewhere if you wanted, the entire endgame concept was not utterly monopolized by one or two highly exclusive guilds. People await Velious like it'll be some great coming of age for this server, but nobody seems to realize what it did to Everquest and how poorly it fits this server and the way it differs from the great old backintheday. There will never be a question of whether or not to implement Luclin on P99 because there will be less than 100 players left by then.

This is a great post and 100% accurate. Many of the zones in velious that were so popular back in the day are now meaningless because of the surplus of superior items in existence here / everyone at max level cap / knowledge of where to get the best stuff. You either raid or do shit in Velious, and one of the most exciting parts for the non-raiders, the Shawl quest, is now pretty shitty here because the 8th shawl will never be implemented. I do disagree about every expansion being like this however, Planes of Power implemented a lot of cool gear for non-raiders like Ornate armor, it brought a lot of good tradeskill made stuff into the game, had groupable tasks etc.

[Elmarnieh]

Luclin on P99 is a moot point as the server will begin hemorrhaging players a few months after Velious comes out. You see, what each expansion after Kunark does is this: if you don't raid, you're nothing. This is doubly important on this extremely top-heavy server where nobody is content to simply see the sights and be level 43 for months. The wonder and magic of Everquest is long gone and people want to do what they didn't get to do as kids a dozen years ago. Unfortunately, Velious introduces the concept of full separation between normal and hardcore players.

In Classic and Kunark, almost no gear is notrade. Epics, the odd quest item, a few raid pieces and then VP gear, everything else is droppable. Almost all of the best gear in the game is tradeable and you don't strictly have to be in the top guild to get it. You can become an "accomplished player" by trading, by knowing the right people, by RMTing or scamming (hey, it counts for the purpose of this discussion) and any other way you can imagine getting a fungi, Cobalt BP, tstaff, CoF and whatever else is considered top items in the game.

Not so in Velious. Suddenly every piece of "BiS" is from NToV or similar. In fact, the top three best items for each slot will usually be notrade raid drops, and anything less will be considered low-level crap. The gear you can get as a non-raider is suddenly laughable and you are nobody if you don't raid. As we all know, raiding on P99 is tantamount to selling your soul to the devil, and there's a gigantic divide between the TMOish crowd and the rest of the server. With everyone realizing that there's no way for their characters to be comparatively decked out without that unrealistic requirment of becoming the 1%, the whole experience will feel tainted and people will stop playing as this feeling sinks in and comes to permeate the server.

This did not happen back in the day because 1) people didn't know better, 2) the vast majority were satisfied with being unambitious nobodies, and 3) there were tons of servers and you could always find a raid guild somewhere if you wanted, the entire endgame concept was not utterly monopolized by one or two highly exclusive guilds. People await Velious like it'll be some great coming of age for this server, but nobody seems to realize what it did to Everquest and how poorly it fits this server and the way it differs from the great old backintheday. There will never be a question of whether or not to implement Luclin on P99 because there will be less than 100 players left by then.

This concern is easily rectified by changing the nodrop flag on some pieces to bring them more in line with kunark no drop ratios. NTOV or Sleepers can be the same as VP - almost all no drop and the rest can be droppable. But I'd say nodrop really occurred in Luclin after all Horn of Hssagra and other raid mobs did have very valuable dropable pieces.

[Elmarnieh]

PoP did do more to move high quality gear into the hands of the non-raider. Elemental bows were craftable and crafting got a huge amount of new very good items.

What PoP did to kill the game was to make travel so easy. Luclin made travel for not porting classes bearable, PoP made it trivial and broke some of the class interdependence to a point where the community suffered for it.

[heartbrand]

People cry a lot about books but let's be honest, if you were of the appropriate level you spent all your time in PoP anyway so who cared you could book to Halas.

[webrunner5]

Nexus(easyports), bazaar, character models, cats on moon, OP gear

all reasons i hate Luclin

All the reasons I loved Luclin. The zones were awesome. Beasts were the cats ass. :D

[iifetap]

I really hate reviving old threads and I'll sure a lot of people don't wanna see this thread, but the servers are down right now and I'm bored waiting for them to come back up, so I'm going to post anyway.

Luclin was my favorite expansion. It's probably because I just started playing a few weeks before it came out, but even then it was probably over 1-2 months (started a necro) before I was even able to teleport up there and get groups and get back to the grind. Their is a whole lot of crying about how it killed travel, but you are forgetting something, the devs for this server are capable of changing how the books work, they could remove all of the books from the starting areas and just leave a couple books around. The devs could also disable beastmaster and vah shir, so those wouldn't be a problem. Since there is also a lot of whining about how much quicker you level.......really? You don't think the devs could just destroy the ZEM for the new zones and make them on par with the rest of Norrath? I loved the bazaar (and the arena inside of it), I loved AA's, I loved mounts (Something the devs could also remove if its not what the people want).

If I wasn't so tired from lack of sleep (renewed addiction to EverCrack!) I would probably have more things to add in, but eh.

Edit: Even with all the new stuff that Luclin brought, I (and MANY MANY OTHERS) still wen't back to Kunark and Velious to have fun. I spent MONTHS (6+) playing around in cabilis.

[Weekapaug]

Loved Luclin. Loved PoP, too.

I'm here because I love EverQuest. Loved every era and expansion thru DoN, aside from GoD, and I didn't hate TSS....Wasn't crazy about it, but didn't hate it.

Loved classic. Loved Kunark and Velious. But I loved Luclin also. Ssra is one of my favorite zones in the game. Lower Guk take 3, after actual Lower Guk and OS. But with raid content added and snakes instead of frogs and the cycles were awesome. The itemization was pretty spiffy too. Clickys anyone? The spells some classes got were fantastic. You actually started seeing some true balance in classes with Luclin. And BSTs are pretty cool.

And AA is the shit. You can do things for your toon with AA that no gear can. And instead of shitting up the game for legit newbies who want to actually experience content at their level the way it was intended with 10,000 level 10 epiced rogues in funghis like we have here on p99, people at max level have something to do....At their own level.

In case you couldn't tell, no, I don't subscribe to the notion that classic thru velious was this pristine holy experience and everything after was complete shit. Don't get me wrong, I love the classic era and missed it for a long time. But that's largely nostalgia. EQ, in all of it's eras, has always been amazing. I've kind of been itching to go back to live for a while, even tho it's been like 5 or 6 years.

Sorry the pok books ruined being able to sell ports in EC to people. Bigger fish to fry.

Bring on Luclin. And bring on PoP, too. And I say that as someone who started the game April 99 and had 90 days /played on his main when it hit it's first birthday.

[t0lkien]

Luclin had some good bits, but broke the game. I know it's been said before, but just dropping that bomb here again.

I understand people liking it. However, that doesn't change that it was like the night of sex that led to a HIV diagnosis. The sex may have been good, but it wasn't anywhere near worth the result.

[iifetap]

Luclin had some good bits, but broke the game. I know it's been said before, but just dropping that bomb here again.

I understand people liking it. However, that doesn't change that it was like the night of sex that led to a HIV diagnosis. The sex may have been good, but it wasn't anywhere near worth the result.

Well, considering people with HIV/AIDS live full lives now........

[Swish]

Well I'm done with Velious over everyone posting a ton of screenshots, talking about what they'll camp and asking incessantly for a firm release date.

Bring on teh cats, bring on teh moon...

[t0lkien]

Well, considering people with HIV/AIDS live full lives now........

Well, let's not push the analogy past its intended meaning...

[mwatt]

I have to agree with many that said PoP was the real beginning of the end. I personally think that the customer base was bifurcated into those that could spend hours and hours raiding and keying and those that could not. Yes this exists in Kunark but the gear disparity is not that bad. Granted, some VP gear is pretty damn good but it is only the elite that get that not a significant percentage of the majority, so the bifurcation has less impact. With increased gear disparity it requires double content in every release - this is one of the unrecognized downfalls to the SOE approach back then.

I also agree with those who say that "Cats on the Moon" suck. I always thought so, I am not just parroting Nilbog's stance like some others. It was disrespectful to the genre to do this.

Finally I will also agree with some that I could probably stand Luclin here, because there is more good than bad. AAs are great. Some of the Luclin zones are great. Level 65 is great (that IS Luclin is it not?). Perhaps if we had a Luclin with no cats and no bazaar, that might fly. I would vote for making the models optional.

[iifetap]

Level 65 is great (that IS Luclin is it not?). Perhaps if we had a Luclin with no cats and no bazaar, that might fly. I would vote for making the models optional.

65 was PoP.

[Tasslehofp99]

This is how I view luclin:

One author starts writing a series of fictional novels, they are very successful. This author would be verant interactive/989, with their work being classic eq through velious.

Then another author comes along (soe) and says you know what, good work, but its not making nearly as much money AS IT COULD. SO the new author begins writing a new book starting where the last one left off, seemingly without researching the things that made the original authors work so good. They probably figured, fuck it...we are sony, we know what gamers want and basically raped the original authors work because they were so disconnected from it.


Or something...idk I'm fucking tired.

[Weekapaug]

Well, considering people with HIV/AIDS live full lives now........

Exactly.

There was no "beginning of the end." There was no "end" at all. There might have been a beginning of the end or an end for YOU, but the game is still played, in current live content, by thousands of people.

You people do realize that there are level 100s on live now that started their toons on day 1 in March 99, don't you?

[Weekapaug]

Luclin had some good bits, but broke the game.

No, it inflated the game. There's a difference. You may or may not like that, but it is a different thing entirely.

[t0lkien]

Exactly.

There was no "beginning of the end." There was no "end" at all. There might have been a beginning of the end or an end for YOU, but the game is still played, in current live content, by thousands of people.

You people do realize that there are level 100s on live now that started their toons on day 1 in March 99, don't you?

I don't understand you Luclin+ apologists. If it's what you want, why are you here on p99 reliving classic?

Luclin *did* break the game, in so many ways, and it has been pointed out in many threads before this. There are always people who don't feel that, or don't mind, or actually like the massive mudflation and absurd lack of context, and ultimate destruction of the clear class distinction that made EQ great. That's fine. But this server exists for those who did mind, or we'd all be on that abortive hybrid that Live has become.

So why do you want to change this into that? It's perplexing.

Thankfully Nilbog seems to be pretty single minded about p99 staying classic.

[mgellan]

People on progression servers vote to open new expansions so they can progress to new server firsts, beat the competition on decade old content, and thus compensate for having really really tiny penises...

Regards,
Mg

[Weekapaug]

I don't understand you Luclin+ apologists. If it's what you want, why are you here on p99 reliving classic? You guys are really a study in irony.

Luclin *did* break the game, in so many ways, and it has been pointed out in many threads before this. There are always people who don't feel that, or don't mind, or actually like the massive mudflation and absurd lack of context, and ultimate destruction of class distinction that made the game great. That's fine. But this server exists for those who did mind, or we'd all be on that abortive hybrid that Live has become.

So why do you want to change this into that? It's perplexing.

Thankfully Nilbog seems to be pretty single minded about this staying classic.

I'm a "Luclin+ apologist"? Made me LOL. Like it's some kind of political movement or something. Please. We are talking about a computer game. I'm an EverQuest player, my friend, and have been since April 11, 1999. You? I had been gaming for roughly 20 years at that point. You?

I've played a lot of games, types of games, and genres (we used to not have "genres' by the way, just good games and bad ones) since the 1970's, including text MUDs on a mainframe, and EQ is the standout. It is STILL the standout. In ALL of its forms. THAT is why I'm here. I love the classic era. But I also love most of the expansions that came after, as well. Why is that so hard to understand?

Again, I loved the classic era. Missed it for quite a long time and this server has gone a long way towards scratching that itch. I have nothing but the HIGHEST respect for this project and the intent behind it....really isn't pertainent to this discussion. But the idea that the game was "broken" afterwards is complete bollocks. You just didn't like it. Or missed it completely and it's just cooler to dis it, especially here. Christ, entire CLASSES were broken during the classic era and were fixed later, yet people are so caught up in nostalgia that they don't see that as a problem. I was there. And I was there for quite a few years after. Every era has had its positives and negatives, but has ALL been good, in my opinion. I'm sorry that you disagree. But, please don't confuse nostalgia or your comfort zone with quality.

By way of an example, you know what you could do during OoW and DoN? You could play a paladin, a ranger or a shadowknight and have a specific role on raids. A role that called for YOU, your class, not something just to fill the "role," (although EQ, being EQ you could work around that just like during classic) with specific buffs and abilities to go with it. You know what you couldn't do? MQ epics. You *gasp* EARNED your 1.5 and 2.0. Not farm shit till you could buy a MQ. EARNED it. But, to listen to some of you people, that's all meaningless since you could also click a book and get to where you needed to be a bit faster. OH THE HORROR! Faster travel breaks a game with (what are we up to?) 19 expansions worth of content! An almost 15 year old game got inflated! OMG it's broken! Give me a fucking break. You could start a new character on EQ live today and not even be close to maxing out that character's gear and ability set for years. You can level up, get your AA and get by and be viable a lot sooner, but maxed? No way. How about in Velious? This server has been live for just over 3 years and there are people with multiple maxed out toons and, from what it seems, are currently maxing out low level alts. See my point?

Personally, I think what this boils down to is a lot of people got left in the dust in Luclin and PoP and beyond, took off for WoW (probably after they pissed and moaned about how hard EQ is), got burned because it truly sucks, and now they are back clinging to this notion that the classic era was this perfectly pristine experience, while projecting what they experienced in WoW and the newer games that they CHOSE to play instead of EQ as how EQ wound up. Yet, they haven't logged on live and experienced it themselves in years. It's ridiculous. I have friends from classic EQ who have played WoW since release who still dis EQ in the same way. As if they have a fucking clue.

Don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly comfortable with this server not going beyond Velious, as that's the stated purpose of the server. And I love it here. But we are having a discussion here and the discussion is about would players like to see Luclin. I vote yes. Vote no if you want, but spare me the "Luclin broke the game" horseshit, please.

[Weekapaug]

Oh, and reading back thru both of our posts, I have to add this...

Why do I want to change this into what? Are you suggesting that there isn't mudflation going on like MAD on P99?

I don't recall ANY point during the classic era when fucking alts were running around with epics at level 10. When EVERY rogue you see on the server has a funghi and a 1.0. You? A monk alt with a funghi and dual trance sticks at level 30 was kind of a big deal then. How about here, eh? They rain from the sky.

To suggest that, somehow, Luclin would shit up the server by inflating it, at this point, is absurd. The server IS inflated and we don't even have Velious yet.

And if you are suggesting that Luclin introduced a "lack of class disctinction" I would ask this: Did you even fucking play in Luclin or do you get all of your info from these forums? Or, by "class distinction," do you mean some classes SHOULD be completely useless?

Pass the Kool Aide.

[t0lkien]

Um, gosh.

I'd compare gamer cred with you (I've been gaming since before Pong appeared on table top machines - the first computer game I played was on a main frame, and I still remember the afternoon I clocked an original Spacer Invaders machine) but I really don't think it's relevant. These discussions have been done before, it's tiring and ultimately pointless to repeat it all. There are many who disliked Luclin, and have laid out their reasons, irrespective of what you consider "horseshit" - amongst them the guys who built this server. Mudflation is the least of the issues. Why you would think any of it has to do with some sort of bitter grapes about advancement or something... is a bit bizarre (as is your tone btw). I don't understand, do you consider yourself some sort of authority who can't be wrong or disagreed with, that justifies you raging like a 15 year old? Noone's attacking you. You may want to look up the meaning of apologist; it's not an insult.

It's fine you liked what happened after Luclin and beyond, but wanting Luclin *here* is not what the server is about (the possibility of Nilbog implementing some part of the Luclin expansion after Velious notwithstanding - that would be the end of the game for me however).

[myriverse]

I don't understand you Luclin+ apologists. If it's what you want, why are you here on p99 reliving classic?
It is possible to like both. Frankly, I think the Vah Shir and later the Frogloks were two of the best player races of the game, of all time.

I completely do not understand the complaint that going to the moon took anything away from the fantasy aspect. Everything about the game was still deeply rooted in fantasy. Nothing was remotely scifi.

You actually think "mudflation" is a good complaint in support of P99? LOL!!! P99's mudflation is much worse precisely because it has become mired in the past. Velious is only going to be a brief (and it will be extremely brief), temporary fix before it become hopelessly mired again. The only thing that's going to save P99 is that the population is much, much smaller. Live EQ needed every single bit that Luclin brought (even the Bazaar). The only other alternative was to just end the game, but that would have been a mistake.

IMO, the only Luclin mistake was not having Luclin involve more of the Qeynos/Odus part of the world.

And generally, I found Velious to be the most boring expansion up to GoD.

[bloodmuffin]

I think the Vah Shir and later the Frogloks were two of the best player races of the game, of all time.

I hate you so much.

[fastboy21]

luclin was the embrace of BIG force raiding in earnest...probably hitting its height at the rathe council in pop. if you were a raider, luclin was a ton of content for you and your best 70 or so raiding friends.

i loved it. lore-wise it was hit or miss. the whole story line was weird and unfinished. in the end it was all about end game zone loot, much more so than any previous expansion.

at least in kunark folks were somewhat aware of the ring of scale and in velious folks had some understanding of the war between giants and dragons...luclin had a story, but i challenge most folks to explain it without looking it up.

Vex Thal...maybe the most boring end game raid zone ever. compared to ST, ntov, vp, and even ssraa (also in luclin) it was just not good content. giant zone filled with tedious high hp mobs and bosses. the greatest risk was falling asleep 8 hours into the clear and wiping.

[idontbuff]

I found ssra to be the most fun I had in Luclin, although the expac in general was utter shit.

[pasi]

Luclin ended up being a really solid expansion - it just sucked at first. Anyhow, long post incoming.

I'd go as far as to say the modrod change was the greatest change to raiding in EQ's history. If you have never raided Velious or Luclin before the change - you basically have magicians face a wall and throw 100s of modrods to the floor so the CHeal rotating clerics never go OOM as your DPS autoattacks whatever bad dude that can't possibly kill your tank getting CHealed every 2 seconds. Post rod change, everything got huge HP nerfs and modrods received a cooldown.

Bazaar > EC. I guess there's some people that enjoy the people aspect of EC, but I liked being able to PvP (arena in bazaar) while buying/selling. I enjoyed being able to leave a second account online selling stuff, but I'm someone who would rather play outside of EC.

The whole cats on the moon thing is overblown since Shar Vhal is way the fuck in the middle of no where. I think I went there twice over my entire course of EQ live.

The spires shrinked the world, but using them was still far less desirable than getting a port. It took up to 30 minutes to go from one limited destination to another.

Like every expansion, itemization was fucked at first, but ended up being great. The AC/HP/Mana difference between Luclin and Velious was very small, but the difference was focus effects, more available ATK gear, and more FT gear. Basically, gear became a lot more attractive for non-tanks. Contrast this to Kunark where I choose to gear my 5th alt over my main because a Crude Stein at 20pp is 95% as effective as an Insignia Protector at 150k.

The concept of elemental and bane damage is interesting, but never fully realized. Elemental damage was generally regarded as 1/3rd as effective as weapon damage; however, the aggro per swing of elemental damage is the same as weapon damage. In other words, they could have made proc-less weapons desirable by tanks but not DPS.

Luclin started to modernize raids. You started to see encounters that weren't just a hitbox with an AOE. I posted about this before, but I think the reason Velious encounters are so well received compared to the more complex Luclin encounters has to do with the NPC models being the same and the bleaker environment. If you're not sold on that idea, go look at how well Gates of Discord was received from an aesthetic standpoint.

SSra Temple was one of the better raid zones EQ ever put out. Every encounter there was quality with the exception of Xerkizh the Creator who was basically a Velious-era fight carried over.

I never did Acrylia 1.0 outside of the Ring of Fire and Burrower. Ring of Fire was an amazing fight when it actually worked. I think only Ring of Valor ever ended up doing Inner Acrylia. There was the whole Grimling War raid that never got done much until EQmac years later.

Vex Thal was a huge disappointment outside of the loot. I'll give this point up to the Luclin haters. So. much. trash. The zone was pretty, the loot was awesome, and blinding Eoms were hilarious, but still a piece of shit zone.

Toward the end of Velious, you started to see a return to groupable gear not being terrible with the revamp of Chardok. This continued in Luclin and probably culminated with the revamp of Cazic Thule. Cazic Thule post-revamp was fucking awesome as an exp zone.

AAs give people progression outside of gear (raiding).

And for the first time in EQ's history, the developers tried to give a fuck about balance. Druids become ok again, rangers stop sucking, paladins get something to do on raids, mages stop being vending machines, necros become a real DPS class, wizards stop sucking in sustained fights, etc.

Luclin, fuck yeah.

[Splorf22]

Luclin started to modernize raids. You started to see encounters that weren't just a hitbox with an AOE. I posted about this before, but I think the reason Velious encounters are so well received compared to the more complex Luclin encounters has to do with the NPC models being the same and the bleaker environment. If you're not sold on that idea, go look at how well Gates of Discord was received from an aesthetic standpoint.

I'm sure Nilbog considers Velious the end of P1999, but personally I think it would be fun to add some of the zones from later expacs (with mobs and itemization appropriately retuned).

[heartbrand]

dunno I wish they'd keep going on servers or @ least red and let u transfer off to a "perma classic" server or some shit to give us something to do. You can keep that perma classic museum server for antiquity as a testament to classic EQ and what not, I don't see what harm is done by enabling other stuff on the "non supported" non classic server or what not. /shrug

[pasi]

Forgot to mention Grieg's End - the most atmospheric zone in SoL-era EQ.

[Anesthia]

Luclin started to modernize raids.

http://i.imgur.com/DuPeMdT.jpg

[poofph]

i liked luclin as well, I loved pop raid content, but pok really did change eq for the worse imo. put velious and luclin on this server and stop there :)

[heartbrand]

Planes of Power was the best expansion I have played in any game ever just my opinion, I don't get all the crying about books, if you were level 60+ you were in the new content who cared that you could click to Grobb and shit that you never went to anyway?

[poofph]

Planes of Power was the best expansion I have played in any game ever just my opinion, I don't get all the crying about books, if you were level 60+ you were in the new content who cared that you could click to Grobb and shit that you never went to anyway?

It shrank the world a lot imo.. changed the whole feel, it seemed to be more of a real world before hand.. now just click click and you are now on the opposite side of the world. the books are part of the reason why people want a classic type server I think.

[heartbrand]

I dunno I mean how often were you in classic zones during Velious? During luclin? PoP?

[SamwiseRed]

didnt really shrink the world if you already played a druid/wizard.

[ArumTP]

EQ didnt decline till after PoP

IMO kunark is a worse expansion than luclin entertainment wise

Iksars are incredibly ugly
mobs have huge hps and hit hard
the end-zone VP is a pita to get in
travel is terrible

The only upside was epics, otherwise the entirety of kunark is a wash

Lucing had great leveling zones for everyone, as well as great kiting spots all the way to 60. Easy travel and access, lots of raid targets. Improved selling and lots of cheese, etc. And AA's.. just amazing.



^ Very much this. I don't know all the rose colored glasses for kunark. But it relay is a stinker of an expansion

[heartbrand]

kunark is a terrible terrible expansion imo

[Swish]

kunark is a terrible terrible expansion imo

You're just bored of it.

Best playable race on live arguably came with Kunark (was anyone else around to see the Drakkin? aaaahahahahaha...). Also epics were all Kunark era, we'd be lost without the expansion :p

[pasi]

I like Kunark, but it is definitely a leveling expansion. If you're looking at it from the perspective of a level 60, it's a weak expansion. The top end is very shallow, and I'm not even talking about raiding here. Keep in mind that the majority of people in raiding guilds were not even 60 when Velious launched.

I know praising aspects of 'that game' is a big no-no around these parts, but I think vanilla WoW's model of travel was perfect. You had a system where you needed to travel somewhere first before you could use the painless 'quick' system. Travel still took time, and you physically flew over the terrain so the world did not lose its magnitude. Not to mention the scenery specifically designed for Griffin/Bat/Hippogryph rides. It even served as a money sink.

Players like a big world to travel in, but if the developers enabled binding in TD for a week, 90% of the server would be bound at firepots.

"I want other people to experience the world, but I will personally take convenience."

[fastboy21]

I like Kunark, but it is definitely a leveling expansion. If you're looking at it from the perspective of a level 60, it's a weak expansion. The top end is very shallow, and I'm not even talking about raiding here. Keep in mind that the majority of people in raiding guilds were not even 60 when Velious launched.

I know praising aspects of 'that game' is a big no-no around these parts, but I think vanilla WoW's model of travel was perfect. You had a system where you needed to travel somewhere first before you could use the painless 'quick' system. Travel still took time, and you physically flew over the terrain so the world did not lose its magnitude. Not to mention the scenery specifically designed for Griffin/Bat/Hippogryph rides. It even served as a money sink.

Players like a big world to travel in, but if the developers enabled binding in TD for a week, 90% of the server would be bound at firepots.

"I want other people to experience the world, but I will personally take convenience."

Yes, the go their first by foot was very cool...when EQ invented it with velious, lol.

[SamwiseRed]

I like Kunark, but it is definitely a leveling expansion. If you're looking at it from the perspective of a level 60, it's a weak expansion. The top end is very shallow, and I'm not even talking about raiding here. Keep in mind that the majority of people in raiding guilds were not even 60 when Velious launched.

I know praising aspects of 'that game' is a big no-no around these parts, but I think vanilla WoW's model of travel was perfect. You had a system where you needed to travel somewhere first before you could use the painless 'quick' system. Travel still took time, and you physically flew over the terrain so the world did not lose its magnitude. Not to mention the scenery specifically designed for Griffin/Bat/Hippogryph rides. It even served as a money sink.

Players like a big world to travel in, but if the developers enabled binding in TD for a week, 90% of the server would be bound at firepots.

"I want other people to experience the world, but I will personally take convenience."

ye firepots bound people complaining about books is lol. also i loved the FP system. you still had to run places also the view was cool from up in the sky.

[pasi]

Yes, the go their first by foot was very cool...when EQ invented it with velious, lol.

Yeah. There's a difference between go-there-by-foot first then have instant travel available and go-there-by-foot first and require a flight. I mentioned the latter as I think it's a better compromise between instant travel and hoofing it.

[fastboy21]

Porting isn't instant travel unless you are a Druid or wizard IMO.

[Kika Maslyaka]

I like Kunark, but it is definitely a leveling expansion. If you're looking at it from the perspective of a level 60, it's a weak expansion. The top end is very shallow, and I'm not even talking about raiding here. Keep in mind that the majority of people in raiding guilds were not even 60 when Velious launched.

I know praising aspects of 'that game' is a big no-no around these parts, but I think vanilla WoW's model of travel was perfect. You had a system where you needed to travel somewhere first before you could use the painless 'quick' system. Travel still took time, and you physically flew over the terrain so the world did not lose its magnitude. Not to mention the scenery specifically designed for Griffin/Bat/Hippogryph rides. It even served as a money sink.

Players like a big world to travel in, but if the developers enabled binding in TD for a week, 90% of the server would be bound at firepots.

"I want other people to experience the world, but I will personally take convenience."

totally agree on all points.

re: Luclin - it wasn't all bad but it just wasn't thought out well.
Personally I would have:

1. picked a different theme (Shadow World that exists in paralel with normal world and has multiple points of entry, rather than the moon)

2. even if doing the moon, I would have avoided outright sci-fi themes like bogling aliens, neitherian aliens etc.

3. Would not put insane XP modifiers on newbie zones, and would not offer so many new newbies zones to begin with - made the leveling up path just for Vah Shir, and make the rest of expansion in the high end. It was pretty clear that only 1-30 zones on Luclin were mostly in demand, and then most of 40-60 zones were majorly empty, except the raiding parts.

4. general level lay out of the zones was poor. Take Twilight Sea - its a 35-45 zone that is located in between of 3 45+ zones - how would you ever get there if you were 35? WHY would you go there?

5. Vex Thale - the end game zone was beautiful , but time sink to key for it, and play in it was retarded. I don't mind hard questing. I don't mind hard raiding. But what I do mind is retarded endless camp grind of of lev 20-40 mobs for some stupid shard, when I am lev 60. What they should have done instead is spread the shard between 10 RAID target mobs located all over Luclin which would be hard to kill (50+ raid force) but would have a 24 hours repop. It would have been much more reasonable.

Good points:

1. Vah Shir
2. Beastlords
3. Spell updates to sucky classes like Rangers and Paladins
4. SSRA - next level of smart raiding content
5. Spires! (yes! spires!)
6. Bazaar!
7. Mounts! - however I would have made it so you cannot fight/cast from mount - so they are for travel only
8. New Models - I liked majority of new models, and disliked some of them, but model point being moot, since you can turn them off.

[Ryba]

Luclin ended up being a really solid expansion - it just sucked at first. Anyhow, long post incoming.

I'd go as far as to say the modrod change was the greatest change to raiding in EQ's history. If you have never raided Velious or Luclin before the change - you basically have magicians face a wall and throw 100s of modrods to the floor so the CHeal rotating clerics never go OOM as your DPS autoattacks whatever bad dude that can't possibly kill your tank getting CHealed every 2 seconds. Post rod change, everything got huge HP nerfs and modrods received a cooldown.

Bazaar > EC. I guess there's some people that enjoy the people aspect of EC, but I liked being able to PvP (arena in bazaar) while buying/selling. I enjoyed being able to leave a second account online selling stuff, but I'm someone who would rather play outside of EC.

The whole cats on the moon thing is overblown since Shar Vhal is way the fuck in the middle of no where. I think I went there twice over my entire course of EQ live.

The spires shrinked the world, but using them was still far less desirable than getting a port. It took up to 30 minutes to go from one limited destination to another.

Like every expansion, itemization was fucked at first, but ended up being great. The AC/HP/Mana difference between Luclin and Velious was very small, but the difference was focus effects, more available ATK gear, and more FT gear. Basically, gear became a lot more attractive for non-tanks. Contrast this to Kunark where I choose to gear my 5th alt over my main because a Crude Stein at 20pp is 95% as effective as an Insignia Protector at 150k.

The concept of elemental and bane damage is interesting, but never fully realized. Elemental damage was generally regarded as 1/3rd as effective as weapon damage; however, the aggro per swing of elemental damage is the same as weapon damage. In other words, they could have made proc-less weapons desirable by tanks but not DPS.

Luclin started to modernize raids. You started to see encounters that weren't just a hitbox with an AOE. I posted about this before, but I think the reason Velious encounters are so well received compared to the more complex Luclin encounters has to do with the NPC models being the same and the bleaker environment. If you're not sold on that idea, go look at how well Gates of Discord was received from an aesthetic standpoint.

SSra Temple was one of the better raid zones EQ ever put out. Every encounter there was quality with the exception of Xerkizh the Creator who was basically a Velious-era fight carried over.

I never did Acrylia 1.0 outside of the Ring of Fire and Burrower. Ring of Fire was an amazing fight when it actually worked. I think only Ring of Valor ever ended up doing Inner Acrylia. There was the whole Grimling War raid that never got done much until EQmac years later.

Vex Thal was a huge disappointment outside of the loot. I'll give this point up to the Luclin haters. So. much. trash. The zone was pretty, the loot was awesome, and blinding Eoms were hilarious, but still a piece of shit zone.

Toward the end of Velious, you started to see a return to groupable gear not being terrible with the revamp of Chardok. This continued in Luclin and probably culminated with the revamp of Cazic Thule. Cazic Thule post-revamp was fucking awesome as an exp zone.

AAs give people progression outside of gear (raiding).

And for the first time in EQ's history, the developers tried to give a fuck about balance. Druids become ok again, rangers stop sucking, paladins get something to do on raids, mages stop being vending machines, necros become a real DPS class, wizards stop sucking in sustained fights, etc.

Luclin, fuck yeah.

I'm glad I read some of this thread or I would have wasted time typing out pretty much this exactly.

And t0lkien: I usually agree with your posts, but your opinion-- "Luclin *did* break the game, in so many ways, and it has been pointed out in many threads before this" --is still just an opinion, even if it is dressed up like an absolute statement. In fact, a lot of evidence points to Luclin being a profitable and well received expansion. Was everyone who played it foolishly deriving pleasure from a broken game?

Luclin had a bunch of shit in it, but so did EQ classic. Everyone is simply less critical of classic EQ because it was still establishing a baseline for how to think about MMORPGs. So we don't revile things like horrible melee itemization and class balance in classic because we thought that that's Just How It Is.

The whole point is moot because AAs were "gutted" from the code early on. But I would be much more enthusiastic about playing here if I knew the server would stop at PoP where raiding would open up once and for all. Quarm event is somewhat anticlimactic, but it does feel like it put SOME kind of a capstone on the game.

It is odd to me that some people don't see Luclin and PoP as adding anything worthwhile. Sony left the elf fantasy canon to do something original but flawed, and I think it is remarkable that they were able to release 4 playable expansions before coughing up the turd known as GoD. If we were taking sides, I would much rather hang out with the apologists than the purists. Nobody likes a hipster.

[Gadwen]

I had a ton of fun in Luclin and PoP era on Live. in hindsight yes, I enjoyed the classic era more...but a large part of that has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game itself. But when Luclin came out I don't remember thinking that the game was being destroyed, in fact I liked a lot of the features it brought to the game. Yeah the whole moon thing is kinda dumb and it could have used a little more time on the drawing board...but what stage of EQ couldn't have used a little extra dev time or a little more testing etc? But overall I enjoyed myself during Luclin, it never once prompted to me to write a dissertation on the downfall of EQ.

[Splorf22]

I'm told most people either think Velious or PoP was the high point of EQ. I'm curious why people hated whatever expac came after PoP (I quite on Live just after Kunark, so all these expacs are new to me)

[heartbrand]

I loved GoD because of the challenge it presented [even if it was unintentional], OOW was ok, I forgot what came next but if it was DoN I really hated that one, the ones with mayong were fine [DoDH/TBS], I thought PoR was good, TSS sucked imo, SoF was good, SoD good, UF real good, HoT lame.

[Thulack]

I loved GoD because of the challenge it presented [even if it was unintentional], OOW was ok, I forgot what came next but if it was DoN I really hated that one, the ones with mayong were fine [DoDH/TBS], I thought PoR was good, TSS sucked imo, SoF was good, SoD good, UF real good, HoT lame.

UF was GoD style hard and HoT was super easy. Thats why your opinions are that way lol.

[Borador]

Hot needs cold, happy needs sad, up needs down.

Original EQ had a lot of severe consequences. That ding when you level is certainly no musical masterpiece, but its significance of your accomplishment is what makes it the greatest sound you could ever hear.

We all love the features that make it easier, but they affect the long term enjoyment in a negative way. Unless of course you add new "features".

There was an article written a long time ago around PoP era regarding SOE subscribers/profits. A small % came from people actually logging in to play on a consistent basis, the majority came from new and super casuals.

[heartbrand]

UF was GoD style hard and HoT was super easy. Thats why your opinions are that way lol.

Ya UF was great I think we were 3rd to down TFC or w/e, it almost didn't die b4 the next expansion. Being flagged for the different tiers actually felt like an accomplishment in UF.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

shard camps. Vex Thal, aka candy land.

I liked Luclin. My guild rocked it, and we really pulled together to get to the imo well-designed end game of that expansion. But I agree with the sentiment, that it got unlocked way too early on the progression servers a couple years ago.

No problem with that happening here, of course. I'm guessing Luclin sometime around 2019. You know you want it.

[pasi]

I'm told most people either think Velious or PoP was the high point of EQ. I'm curious why people hated whatever expac came after PoP (I quite on Live just after Kunark, so all these expacs are new to me)

The first expansion after PoP was a cash grab for armor dye, charms, and bank slots.
The next expansion after PoP was predominately a grouping expansion that was incredibly casual friendly. The raids for it were ridiculously difficult for the rewards though.

The first 'true expansion' after PoP was Gates of Discord which most people attribute to the death of the game. Gates of Discord was intended for and tuned for level 70 characters, but the level cap was still 65. IMO, it was the first time in EQ that the game was actually difficult (and by difficult, I don't just mean very punishing for stupid mistakes like EQ up to then was).

Gates had awesome encounter design, but the content was completely overtuned and I think the expansion had only 6 or 7 different NPC models. Every zone also looked the same.

To give you a rough idea of how difficult the expansion was at release - take Uqua 1.0. For starters, the entire zone had an unresistable permanent AOE that reduced your base stats to 100ish. This was only blockable by archetype-equippable items that dropped 1 per trash mob. Each trash mob quadded for 3000 (what 72man raid bosses in the previous expansion hit for. This was in an era where top end warriors were 10k HP with the zone debuff. Every death in the zone spawned another trash mob that quadded for 3k. Now, you could single pull trash, but pulling was complicated in that mobs were spawned off traps rather than static spawns. The entire zone had a timer so you had to move at a certain pace. As time went on, NPCs got more ATK, HP, Armor, Resists, etc. And that's all before the first bosses of the zone.

Now, I'm sure people who never experienced it like the increased difficulty, but the game was bleeding subs and WoW was in beta at this time. The majority of the playerbase was basically confined to a few really shitty instances simply because they didn't have the gear to progress. If you look back at this time, you'll see most of the 'old uber' guilds died off around this time and there was a changing of the guard of top dog guilds.

Kinda sucked that Omens of War was such a great expansion since the damage from Gates had already been done.

[August]

I'm told most people either think Velious or PoP was the high point of EQ. I'm curious why people hated whatever expac came after PoP (I quite on Live just after Kunark, so all these expacs are new to me)

It's because GoD was just god-awful and scaled horribly.

I was a time-geared tank and I remember dying horribly and being unable to take hits in the first instance I went into. I honestly don't remember that much because I pretty much quit after being so frustrated after a couple of months. I remember everything just hitting way too hard and multiple wipes. I can't even imagine what the 'casual' crowd must of thought as I was rocking probably 3/4 PoT gear the rest being elemental.

As to why people like Velious - I think that Luclin furthered the divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' in EQ. If you weren't max level you couldn't think about AAs. If you didn't have the time to get 270 AAs to be raid-capable then you got kicked out, etc. I think Original-Velious represents a certain class of people and I think Orginal-PoP represents that other class of people. Game died @ GoD for me.

[Acrux Bcrux]

I remember a lot of talk going around during god /oow that you really couldnt complete god progession without oow gear. Maybe some guilds did it, i dont know for sure but i do know it was hard as fuxxx. These two expansions were almost released in the wrong order from what i remember, or thats atleast what a lot of the talk was.

[August]

The first expansion after PoP was a cash grab for armor dye, charms, and bank slots.
The next expansion after PoP was predominately a grouping expansion that was incredibly casual friendly. The raids for it were ridiculously difficult for the rewards though.

The first 'true expansion' after PoP was Gates of Discord which most people attribute to the death of the game. Gates of Discord was intended for and tuned for level 70 characters, but the level cap was still 65. IMO, it was the first time in EQ that the game was actually difficult (and by difficult, I don't just mean very punishing for stupid mistakes like EQ up to then was).

Gates had awesome encounter design, but the content was completely overtuned and I think the expansion had only 6 or 7 different NPC models. Every zone also looked the same.

To give you a rough idea of how difficult the expansion was at release - take Uqua 1.0. For starters, the entire zone had an unresistable permanent AOE that reduced your base stats to 100ish. This was only blockable by archetype-equippable items that dropped 1 per trash mob. Each trash mob quadded for 3000 (what 72man raid bosses in the previous expansion hit for. This was in an era where top end warriors were 10k HP with the zone debuff. Every death in the zone spawned another trash mob that quadded for 3k. Now, you could single pull trash, but pulling was complicated in that mobs were spawned off traps rather than static spawns. The entire zone had a timer so you had to move at a certain pace. As time went on, NPCs got more ATK, HP, Armor, Resists, etc. And that's all before the first bosses of the zone.

Now, I'm sure people who never experienced it like the increased difficulty, but the game was bleeding subs and WoW was in beta at this time. The majority of the playerbase was basically confined to a few really shitty instances simply because they didn't have the gear to progress. If you look back at this time, you'll see most of the 'old uber' guilds died off around this time and there was a changing of the guard of top dog guilds.

Kinda sucked that Omens of War was such a great expansion since the damage from Gates had already been done.

We were typing at the same time -- but yes, exactly this. Couldn't remember the names of the damn zones, but I do remember just thinking this stuff was so overpowered it was unbelievable. My guild disbanded due to the increased difficulty and there really was a consolidation of guilds

[August]

The first expansion after PoP was a cash grab for armor dye, charms, and bank slots.
The next expansion after PoP was predominately a grouping expansion that was incredibly casual friendly. The raids for it were ridiculously difficult for the rewards though.


This was LoY and then LDoN? I remember doing the instance content (sand place, mistmoore-ish type place, etc) and then wondering why I was doing it - IIRC the rewards were like augments or like, sub-ornate level gear. My guild did the raids a couple of times and i remember thinking the only reason the gear was even close to worthwhile was multiple sockets for augments. I do remember there being something specific about charging an item - maybe a ranged slot? for those instanced dungeons. The expac was semi-fun.

[pasi]

Yeah, I was a full P4/P5 time with pretty close to perfect augments (I had the 35 AC LdoN raid augment for shield, but was lacking other LDoN raid augs) as an SK, and I couldn't do Ikkinz 2 without exploit aggro kiting the 2nd priest before the nerf.

That's a good snapshot of the expansion - needing a cleric/cleric/warrior/warrior for a 6 man group. At least warriors sucked at Ikkinz 3.

[pasi]

This was LoY and then LDoN? I remember doing the instance content (sand place, mistmoore-ish type place, etc) and then wondering why I was doing it - IIRC the rewards were like augments or like, sub-ornate level gear. My guild did the raids a couple of times and i remember thinking the only reason the gear was even close to worthwhile was multiple sockets for augments. I do remember there being something specific about charging an item - maybe a ranged slot? for those instanced dungeons. The expac was semi-fun.

The LDoN gear was actually outstanding if you took the time to grind it or exploit kill # missions with a clay bracelet.

Originally, the armor could be hit with 3 40 HP augs so it was 100+40+40+40 which was at least on the HP level, equivalent to top-end raid stuff. Even after the nerf, you could get 140 HP stuff with slots for secondary stats/effects. The problem was if you were playing LDoN that hardcore to buy all this stuff, you might as well just raid.

Yes, more LDoN powered up your adventurer's stone which augmented your charm slot. The only charm slot worth a shit would have been the PoP progression one.

I remember a lot of talk going around during god /oow that you really couldnt complete god progession without oow gear. Maybe some guilds did it, i dont know for sure but i do know it was hard as fuxxx. These two expansions were almost released in the wrong order from what i remember, or thats atleast what a lot of the talk was.

Gates of Discord wasn't cleared until everything in Omens of War minus OMM and Arch Mage had also been killed. Even on the recent progression server with lots of overpowered stuff being left in the game from future expansions, I don't think Tacvi was fully cleared.

[t0lkien]

I'm glad I read some of this thread or I would have wasted time typing out pretty much this exactly.

And t0lkien: I usually agree with your posts, but your opinion-- "Luclin *did* break the game, in so many ways, and it has been pointed out in many threads before this" --is still just an opinion, even if it is dressed up like an absolute statement. In fact, a lot of evidence points to Luclin being a profitable and well received expansion. Was everyone who played it foolishly deriving pleasure from a broken game?

Luclin had a bunch of shit in it, but so did EQ classic. Everyone is simply less critical of classic EQ because it was still establishing a baseline for how to think about MMORPGs. So we don't revile things like horrible melee itemization and class balance in classic because we thought that that's Just How It Is.

The whole point is moot because AAs were "gutted" from the code early on. But I would be much more enthusiastic about playing here if I knew the server would stop at PoP where raiding would open up once and for all. Quarm event is somewhat anticlimactic, but it does feel like it put SOME kind of a capstone on the game.

It is odd to me that some people don't see Luclin and PoP as adding anything worthwhile. Sony left the elf fantasy canon to do something original but flawed, and I think it is remarkable that they were able to release 4 playable expansions before coughing up the turd known as GoD. If we were taking sides, I would much rather hang out with the apologists than the purists. Nobody likes a hipster.


Warning, incoming WOT, but all the points being aggressively thrown out in this discussion can't be answered quickly (though they've been answered before).

Thanks for the kudos, and for the record, I'm totally aware of the subjectivity/objectivity conundrum. However, I would still argue that Luclin did objectively break the game that existed up to Velious. I've said before that I also liked aspects of Luclin (SSRAE and other Luclin zones featured in my colour peaced linked in another thread) so it's not a matter of what I liked or didn't like. It's a matter of looking at it objectively and seeing the inevitable result of the things implemented on the future of the game. I and all my friends felt this death the first time we saw a 100+hp item linked in chat. We just couldn't then articulate why it diminished the game, but we intuitively knew it did. With the benefit of hindsight, now I can.

I and others have pointed this out before, and the points keep being challenged so I'm going to do it again, but beware it's a bit of a read:


The context. Cats on the Moon, clearly sci-fi inspired artwork (because, you know, it's on the moon which is in space), and so many other subtle breaks from the High Fantasy world created and adhered to up to Velious. Yes I know EQ was always an uneven mish-mash of D&D/clumsy RPG styling. But the general feel was there, and clear. Luclin was an ugly diversion from this made by people who obviously had no feel for or understanding of what had gone before. Context matters - in fact, after a lifetime playing and reading this stuff, and 15 years trying to make it, I actually think it matters more than any other single thing in game development. Context first, then gameplay which draws naturally from and is empowered by the context (in RPGs).
.

Stat mudflation. Luclin fundamentally undermined every system in the game by blowing the stat increases available via itemization off the chart. This is the inevitable result of continuing a game beyond it's original design, but it means that all the systems (which comprise literally millions+ of interactions of all the numbers that make up the game) are trivialized and unbalanced. The game lost its very carefully guarded numerical heart, and as one who was there from day one I remember how long it took SOE to plug even the most obvious holes with constant patches for the first few months. Anyone who has tried to build an RPG system will understand why this out of proportion stat increase negatively affected game mechanics, the entire feel of the game, and the economy. It changes the game irrevocably, and is the thing that Luclin "broke" most. It pushed it and other MMOs into what I call the "big number system" world. For a look at that, see any Asian MMO. They are very different experiences as a result, and were designed to be so from the ground up, so everything (even the art) plays into it. For a game that was designed to be the opposite from its outset, it was a death blow to the original systems. The Bazaar had the identical direct effect upon the economy, and player interaction and reputation it was built around. If you make things easier, you reduce their value and the value of anything that depended on or fed off them. You can argue about that point as much as you like, it's like arguing against gravity. It's just how it works.
.

The undermining of class distinction. This is a huge one, and Luclin only started it but it opened the door. Ensuing expansions up to and through PoP completed the devastation. When you supply free insta-ports to everyone when previously it was restricted as an earned (read gameplay) class ability to certain classes, when you duplicate existing class defining abilities in "new" classes (Beastmaster), when you introduce mounts to increase player speed when that speed increase ability was a core element in other classes (SoW, Bardsong - an absolute class defining ability; the Bard is built around and balanced off movement speed in every single area of its design), when you supply insta-click items that begin to give every class the ability to do these class-defining things - you blur, undermine, and ultimately remove the beautiful interactions between and value of classes you created the previous expansions. You trivialize the epic feel of the world you carefully created. You devalue player choices. It's literally designer bi-polarism to do something like that. You build up and ruthlessly guard your world only to tear it down. It makes no sense. AA's are included here. I liked them too in concept, but they as much as anything brutalized class separation and distinction which relies upon careful limits as much as it relies upon clearly defined abilities.


There are many other issues that extend naturally from these three. It's a tsunami of rippled effect that meant the end of the original (classic) experience. I know lots of people liked it, and didn't care for or about any of the things lost or foreshadowed as lost in Luclin. The point is they are liking a different type of game and gameplay, and there are literally hundreds of games now that supply that experience.

They also don't understand that when you gain that higher level or new ability or huge HP item, while it initially makes you feel more powerful that is only in context with the world it exists within. If that world is blown up in similar proportion to match the new power (as it must be to keep the game playable), you have gained nothing and lost elegance, balance, and value. You've also trivialized everything that went before it. This is so obvious to me that it's a little frustrating when so many people just don't or can't get it.

But in the end that's ok... I and others who do get it will just move to the places where those things exist (e.g. p99). What's truly bizarre is when those places attract others who go there for what it is, and then agitate to pull it down with the same changes that destroyed it originally. Why do you want every game to be the same? Don't you understand the things that you are desiring to bring here are the very things that killed classic in the first place? If you acknowledge the classic experience enough to play p99, you must understand why it's good, even intuitively. So to want to change it (again) is contradictory. And honestly, it's deeply bemusing for those of us who clearly understand why it is good, and what it is, and are pretty happy it exists in the form of p99 at all - imperfect though that may be.

[Champion_Standing]

In the end that's ok... I and others who do get it will just move to the places where those things exist (e.g. p99). What's truly bizarre is when those places attract others who go there for what it is, and then agitate to pull it down with the same changes that destroyed it originally. So Surely you can see how ironic, frustrating, and aggravating that is. Why do you want every game to be the same? Don't you understand the things that you are desiring to bring here are the very things that killed classic in the first place? If you acknowledge the classic experience enough to play p99, you must understand why it's good, even intuitively. So to want to change is contradictory. And honestly, it's deeply bemusing for those of us who clearly understand why it is good, and what it is, and are pretty happy it exists in the form of p99 at all - imperfect though that may be.

Not going to quote your entire massive post. But seriously man? Just because people say they enjoyed themselves in luclin and liked certain features of it doesn't mean they are trying to usurp and destroy project 1999. Just hearing people say they liked AAs or a certain zone in luclin gets you pretty fired up huh? All i see here are people that liked some stuff about Luclin and later expansions and they are discussing it...but you see an angry mob ready to hold a gun to Nilbogs head and make him add Luclin to the server? What is up with that....seriously?

[t0lkien]

Not going to quote your entire massive post. But seriously man? Just because people say they enjoyed themselves in luclin and liked certain features of it doesn't mean they are trying to usurp and destroy project 1999. Just hearing people say they liked AAs or a certain zone in luclin gets you pretty fired up huh?

Dude, did you read anything I wrote?

[Champion_Standing]

Dude, did you read anything I wrote?

Did you not read your own last paragraph? You are clearly suggesting that people here are trying to change P99 lol.

[runlvlzero]

Nexus(easyports), bazaar, character models, cats on moon, OP gear

all reasons i hate Luclin

I love cats, on the moon =)

[webrunner5]

I think Luclin was a giant step up for EQ, and MMO's. The zones were a big leap from Velious. Velious was just a lot of icy, snow covered, wind blowing zones a million miles apart. I still like playing Cats today on live and a Beastlord is still one of my favorite classes. Luclin at the beginning of it was like playing a entirely new kind of game. I guess I and others liked it, you didn't. Fair enough. I still play live today. So different strokes. I play EQmac more now than here also.

P1999 has just stood still WAY too long.

[webrunner5]

Luclin in the beginning did not have Stones or the new graphics for grass etc. when it first came out. It did have the Bazaar and Cats plus the Nexus Portals. And AA's. After the stones came out I must admit the old game lost a lot. I don't think the original Bizaar was that bad in reality. The new one, well yeah.

But now there are over 500 zones to play and as a solo player I like it a lot. I get bored easily so I am in hog heaven on live. And there is some neat AA's that do even out the classes like I think the Dev's would have liked it to be in the start. It is just stupid on here that hardly anyone plays a Ranger, Pally at all and even a SK, Druid goes to crap after level 50.

When and if Velious ever comes out it will be full of Warriors, Clerics, Monks, Rogues grouping and Shamans soloing. Sounds pretty boring in the long run.

[t0lkien]

But now there are over 500 zones to play and as a solo player I like it a lot.

This is the point right here. EQ classic is not a solo game, by implicit design. You already have so many games like that. Why would it help for p99 to be moved toward that same thing? I completely understand why you like that, and am not criticizing that preference in any way. I (and others) are saying that is not what classic EverQuest or p99 was or should be.

But, positions can only be stated and explained so many times before it becomes meaningless, so I'll bow out now :)

[Ryba]

text wall from page 12

I completely agree with everything you say right up until you get to words like "death blow" or "brutalized." Luclin screwed the pooch in many ways. For instance, new NPC races were a tableau of unmotivated tropes from all subgenres of fantasy. Why were there vampires, cats, little green men and mushroom people? Nobody can tell you, other than "anything goes on the moon." Just an example of your whole "zero context" point, which is really the best argument against Luclin and the only one I won't dispute.

As to stat inflation, there is no question developers gave in to the temptation to reward people with too-powerful items. This is a bad policy for obvious reasons, mainly because it will eventually destroy interest in old content just to briefly increase interest in new stuff. But you must admit that the numbers have to go up to keep people interested, and triple digits were inevitable. I think they probably went 10% too far with Luclin, which set the precedent for exponential jumps. BUT, like monetary inflation, the real problems are pushed into the future and Luclin items were fun and powerful and not yet game-breaking. There were some too-easily obtained droppable weapons (like Centi weapons) that destroyed the market for old world gear, and worse, enthusiasm for old world zones; but on the other hand, I didn't upgrade my t staff until our fourth emperor kill, and most Velious armor is only replaced in Umbral/Ssra/VT. Weapons and gear from ToV and ST were very hard to replace at all.

I think the class distinction argument is the easiest one to take apart. It is still a huge advantage to teleport from wherever your group happens to be rather than run to a spire or a book. It is still a huge advantage to have selo's instead of a mount. They gave new powers to everyone without ruining class-defining roles. SoW was still 5% faster than Swift Journey2, which was a pain in the ass to get, and shaman have had it since level 9 in classic. I don't see why a level cap shaman would be sad about not having to sow his guild as often, or how not having to do so destroys a beautiful interaction. More anecdotes: Critical hits were a cool thing to give other classes, but warriors stayed ahead of the pack. Class AAs were awesome rewards to work up to [Stonewall stands out in my mind, as well as EQ/AM for rangers and MGB for everyone], and actually deepened class distinctions. AAs gave the game a second life at level cap instead of everyone either twinking or quitting once they've done the raid content. I just don't see how you can look back on the imperfect class development of the previous 3 expansions and say that Luclin is where it all went wrong. Powers were shared and increased--and just like with stat inflation, perhaps to too great a degree--but everyone still understood that nobody was going to out-heal a cleric.

Somehow, the game had to mature and characters had to feel stronger. When it comes to the math behind character progression, it does seem like numbers across the board could have been kept more linear. Context and lore went out the window for Luclin and heralded a future where EQ would entirely stop trying to tell you a story you could care about (though they over-compensated with PoP's scripted progression). BUT, most raid content was new and interesting and your character felt more powerful than ever. At the same time, Velious raid targets and quests still posed a challenge and even certain Kunark and vanilla drops remained desirable. In total, Luclin was definitely a step backward, but hardly a game destroyer. There was a lot of content to play through and more zone variety than in the rest of the game combined, plus it bridged the gap to PoP, which failed in its own ways, but at least managed to close the book on EQ with some class.

For what its worth, I agree that "classic" eq ends with Velious, but I think "tolerable" EQ ends with PoP.

[Clark]

Favorite expansion

[fastboy21]

i've never understood why so many folks draw the line at "moon kitties" or "space cats" or whatever folks called them. it never seemed any stranger to me then "snake men on the moon" or "4 armed aliens in dresses on the moon" or uhmm everyone else on the moon.

its a fantasy game, after all...how is walking and talking cats on norrath any more or less ridiculous than putting them on the moon? p

[Clark]

I think Luclin was a giant step up for EQ, and MMO's. The zones were a big leap from Velious. Velious was just a lot of icy, snow covered, wind blowing zones a million miles apart. I still like playing Cats today on live and a Beastlord is still one of my favorite classes. Luclin at the beginning of it was like playing a entirely new kind of game. I guess I and others liked it, you didn't. Fair enough. I still play live today. So different strokes.
P1999 has just stood still WAY too long.

[webrunner5]

This is the point right here. EQ classic is not a solo game, by implicit design. You already have so many games like that. Why would it help for p99 to be moved toward that same thing? I completely understand why you like that, and am not criticizing that preference in any way. I (and others) are saying that is not what classic EverQuest or p99 was or should be.

If EQ is not a solo game than why can't a Ranger , or a Necro or a Wizard get in a group on here. You pick anyone of those on P1999 and you had pretty much like to solo or you are out of luck. Oh and your a Iksar or Troll SK that really helps getting in groups also. And guess what none of that is going to change in Velious except the removal of the XP penalty. So woopee the SK might get in a group.

When Velious comes out TMO, FE, IB will have the high end stuff locked up for 6 months. Tons of people are already level 60 so what are their mains going to do? Two years into Velious people will be pissing and moaning just like they are now about Kunark. With no way out.

Like I have said before Velious was not one of my favorite expansions. So I am looking forward to it and not. PoP made all the other expansions look like a cake walk compared to all the work it took to get into PoT. Then is when you NEEDED to group. Only real time you NEED to group now is to get your high end pieces for your Epic.

But I am not complaining about P1999. I have had a lot of fun on here so far. Got better gear than I ever had in the original Kunark for sure. So Nilbog has made a lot of us happy and that is a good thing. I am sure he even smiles once in awhile also. :rolleyes:

[Zuranthium]

The only thing that actually matters about expansions are the design/story elements and how they shape the game World. You don't need to release an expansion to change class balance, or item balance, or raid encounters, or even to introduce new content. The original Everquest could have continued exist, and would have been more successful in the long run, without adding any new zones at all (great new zones can obviously be a benefit, though). What you need to do is continually change quests and character abilities and drops and NPC behavior/spawns.

If all of those elements are constantly changing, then your players are continually being challenged and exploring the game World, both through experiencing a new zone/encounter re-vamp and through questing for a new item or ability which has become the most ideal for a new game encounter and/or character build. There are plenty of ways to monetize the game with micro-transactions in order to make money, such as only being able to do a certain # of quests before you have to pay to do more, buying more character slots, buying more bank storage, buying new class skills...it's incredibly easy to nickel and dime players if they are loving the game and you're still getting new people buying the game all the time as well, since the game would never be something which requires anyone to "catch up" with regards to grinding and put new players off.

Therefore, Luclin was definitely the end of Everquest. It had almost no connection whatsoever to the rest of the game World and a lot of the zones just felt like boxes IMO. PoP was even worse in that regard, completely obliterating the sense of an immersive World and having zones that 100% felt like boxes (well, I actually never even saw all of them, but I definitely saw enough). This was actually the one real design flaw of Original Everquest - the "Planes" were rather poorly designed in terms of conveying the sense of a GOD's entire territory.

Kunark was easily the best expansion because it had a lot of brilliantly designed creatures and zones, which were highly explorable (dangerously!) and interconnected. The designs had a whole new feel as compared to Original Everquest and yet felt 100% organic to the game World. The Iksar being a playable race and starting off in the middle of the continent, and being hated EVERYWHERE else in the Old World (even by the evil races), was an excellent concept.

Velious was good, but didn't quite feel fully formed. Yes, it's supposed to be one of the most desolate places on the planet, but there still could have been more to it. The fact that it was nearly all icy/snowy didn't bother me at all; this made complete sense and was even a necessary addition to the game World, since there were so few areas in the game with that kind of look and feel. The concept of the war between Giants and Dwarves was good, although it needed to have a bit more resonance. I REALLY think an extra, easier zone connection to Western Wastes was needed as well, to bridge the gap on the continent. A tunnel from Thurgadin would have made perfect sense (or rather a tunnel to another zone that connected to Western Wastes...if you look at the World map there's quite a gap there).

[Obsidus]

While I had a lot of fun with the Luclin expansion, and have a ton of nostalgia about it, I'd have to say it introduced more problems than it was worth ultimately. The biggest two being the fact that Paludal Caverns and Dawnshroud, etc, completely and utterly destroyed 90% of the reasons to set foot in old content pre 48. Secondly, the itemization was insanely over inflated, and ridiculous gear became far too easy to get.

[SCB]

Luclin brought Shissar and Akhevans. I love both of those things. Anything else is secondary to how cool both of those are. I sort of even wish they'd found a way to shoehorn those bastards into Velious, like the Giants that somehow escaped the curse of their kin.

[LordSterben]

Add AAs to Velious. And screw cat people...make Coldain a playable race...just dwarves that start in Thurg with higher cold resist. Problems solved and I'm sure super easy to code XD

[eridi]

One of the common negs ive seen about Luclin in this thread revolves around "cats on the moon" and people saying how it was all syfy for it to be that way. According to the lore in the game the Kerrans that were sent to the moon(vah'shir) were sent there magically and the moon was infact habitable before they were there. Its my opinion that most people who use the whole "cats on the moon" argument are thinking more our RL moon(habitable planet uninhabitable moon) vs a romulus/remus; both fictional(habitable planet habitable moon) situation.

I for one loved both luclin and pop. Pretty much hated everything after pop though because really after you kill the gods(creators) im thinkin you can call it a day.

...oh and on the topic of mudification of classes. Even EQ 19 xpacs in has 1000x the class distinction of any other mmorpg. Clickies/cross-class skills just made it so you didnt have to sit around for hours tring to find that specific friendly "randombuffclass" to give you a buff you were after. I had a main sham and it didnt chap my ass one bit when BL's came out. Yea it added another slower, but my slow and buffs were still better.

[mtb tripper]

i like turtles

[LordSterben]

There was always SciFi in EQ:

Rodcet Nife is a grey who shoots crop circles out of his finger and the cleric guild is a flying saucer for cryin out loud.

[SCB]

There was always SciFi in EQ:

Rodcet Nife is a grey who shoots crop circles out of his finger and the cleric guild is a flying saucer for cryin out loud.

Yeah I find anyone who complains about Luclin "adding scifi" to EQ to be pretty silly.

[Bantam 1]

It wasn't that cat people on the moon was sci fi.... it was that the lore was goofy as hell.

[Ryba]

I have no problem with the sci fi theme of Luclin, but they took it too far. EVERYTHING was bizarre. There were mutants, vampires, multi colored alien dudes, akhevans, grimlings, thought horrors, giant worms, sun worshippers, cavemen, communists (seru), and nazgul, and the only races they bothered to tie into the plot (albeit loosely) were cats and snakes.

Every NPC model you saw before Luclin made sense SOMEHOW. Even shit like centaur and aviak, which were never developed as races, at least fit with the theme. In Luclin, they set out to create their own flavor of fantasy and totally forgot to give us some context in which to think about whatever the fuck a grimling is. J.R.R. Tolkien said something about fantasy needing to "follow its own rules", in other words, have some internal consistency. Luclin EQ couldn't give less of a fuck whether you knew why you were killing a caveman on the moon.

Most of Luclin is Jar Jar Binks, or Henry Winkler waterskiing over a shark. It was still fun, but it was not a tight narrative anymore and writing took a backseat to spectacle. Raid events were well itemized and AAs saved the end-game, otherwise I would be on the fucking-cats-on-the-fucking-moon bandwagon.

[koros]

Seriously, what's this "gear jump" people keep talking about? Luclin had 125hp items at the end of VP, Velious had 100 hp items all over Ntov.

If you're talking about for low levels to mid 50s, then Kunark introduced items like the 9/18 common droppable 1 hander and the fungii tunic.

Point being: Whatever gear power increase you've perceived is wrong. Especially when compared with previous expansions.

[Leddy]

If we want Luclin, just give us the AA's from Luclin and custom zones that fit with the classic theme.

[SCB]

I have no problem with the sci fi theme of Luclin, but they took it too far. EVERYTHING was bizarre. There were mutants, vampires, multi colored alien dudes, akhevans, grimlings, thought horrors, giant worms, sun worshippers, cavemen, communists (seru), and nazgul, and the only races they bothered to tie into the plot (albeit loosely) were cats and snakes.


I can kind of get behind this, but Akhevans and all humans were directly supported by the lore as well. The reason I like Akhevans was that I was always a fan of Luclin. Thought Horrors seemed to fit the theme well, as did grimlings (habitable world is going to have natives and all that stuff) but I'm 100% on board with hating the cavemen. Those dudes never made sense to me.

If we want Luclin, just give us the AA's from Luclin and custom zones that fit with the classic theme.

And tune the content for Velious +AA's. I'm so down with that. Ssra temple at bottom of LOIO and tell Veksar to go to hell. Akhevans in a dungeon linked to ToFS. CT revamp too cuz why not.

[Ryba]

Seriously, what's this "gear jump" people keep talking about? Luclin had 125hp items at the end of VP, Velious had 100 hp items all over Ntov.

If you're talking about for low levels to mid 50s, then Kunark introduced items like the 9/18 common droppable 1 hander and the fungii tunic.

Point being: Whatever gear power increase you've perceived is wrong. Especially when compared with previous expansions.

Luclin had +100 stat items for every slot on farmable raid content. Maiden's Eye and Umbral Plains drops had no level restriction and were often left to rot, and it was very easy to get a level 1 to these zones. Stuff like Divine Inspiration (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=7338), Stone Visor (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=8888) and Goranga Spiked Club (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=7135) could be looted by alts or passersby, after a while. I remember people running twinks to pick up Rumblecrush rots and things like Knotted Knuckles. (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=10204)

So it wasn't just the power of the items, it was about how accessible they were. I don't think any of this was game-breaking, but it got the ball rolling a bit too fast.

[runlvlzero]

Luclin had +100 stat items for every slot on farmable raid content. Maiden's Eye and Umbral Plains drops had no level restriction and were often left to rot, and it was very easy to get a level 1 to these zones. Stuff like Divine Inspiration (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=7338), Stone Visor (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=8888) and Goranga Spiked Club (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=7135) could be looted by alts or passersby, after a while. I remember people running twinks to pick up Rumblecrush rots and things like Knotted Knuckles. (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=10204)

So it wasn't just the power of the items, it was about how accessible they were. I don't think any of this was game-breaking, but it got the ball rolling a bit too fast.

I think this server needs VP loot trivialized so people can focus on playing the game rather than hoarding pixels.

Luclin would do great for the community. People could either pick luclin weapons or epics.

All the arguments I see are +raider hate for luclin. EQ was never really a raiding game for me... sure I raided. But it wasn't the primary focus for me for a long time.

Lore wise its more or less fine.

Lastly there is stuff for end game poopsockers to do in luclin that blows any of that junk from umbral or ME away. Seru himself. Those that opt out of that, can still enjoy 3 expansions with reasonably powerful but not OP gear. With the munchkins hanging in umbral it will leave places like MM more empty for legit players to go group in. Rather than deal with farmers.

Pushing all the farmers into luclin would be a super good thing.

[koros]

Rumblecrush still required a "raid", and it's going to be ages before passerby's can loot anything off him.

Those knuckles? Not very good in primary, and an uncommon drop off a raid mob, barely better damage than a stave of shielding in offhand.

Stuff like eyepatch of plunder, lodi shield, plane of growth armor, plane of hate 2.0 drops, etc, etc make the gear difference between Kunark and Velious far deeper than the gear change between Velious and Luclin.

[Ryba]

Rumblecrush still required a "raid", and it's going to be ages before passerby's can loot anything off him.

Those knuckles? Not very good in primary, and an uncommon drop off a raid mob, barely better damage than a stave of shielding in offhand.

Stuff like eyepatch of plunder, lodi shield, plane of growth armor, plane of hate 2.0 drops, etc, etc make the gear difference between Kunark and Velious far deeper than the gear change between Velious and Luclin.

The point isn't that this stuff is great, the point is that it is slightly better than most of the other options and easier to get. At the middle levels, why would you camp anything in Velious or Kunark when Long Sword of Ethereal Energy is so easy to get? Yeah, they went back and nerfed that quest, but not before everyone had one. Goranga and Centi weapons became the new fine steel. Goranga club is almost a Frostbringer and you can walk a level 1 to ME zone line for it.

Again, I'm not saying it was a huge discrepancy, I'm just saying this was an opportunity to pump the breaks on stat inflation to extend the life of the game, and they didn't take it.

[Quylein]

no thanks for luclin, there are many other emu's and live that have it I'd say go there if you wanna have non-classic

[Ahldagor]

http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2001/pc/featurepreviews/everquest_luclin/everquest_luclin_790screen009.jpg

[SCB]

troll luclin model sucks

Now do iksar, which is much better (minus swimming change).

Or human, half-elf, any elf-based model, or barbarians. All significantly better. Short races, ogres, and trolls get kind of boned, but hey you can leave classic models on for them.

[Gustoo]

It is a known fact that luclin ruins this game.

If we do anything beyond velious, it will be custom content. I could easily see the luclin era updates to zones like runnyeye happening to make those dungeons worth visiting (upgrade to ALLOY instead of iron)

and other stuff possibly taken from luclin and beyond content. This stuff could be implemented in such a way that the whole old world isn't more of a desolate wasteland than it already is.

[kaev]

Now do iksar, which is much better (minus swimming change).

Or human, half-elf, any elf-based model, or barbarians. All significantly better. Short races, ogres, and trolls get kind of boned, but hey you can leave classic models on for them.

Half-elf had a pretty good plate helm model replaced by painfully stupid-looking dildo hat, that alone was/is enough to nix luclin models for me.

[SCB]

Half-elf had a pretty good plate helm model replaced by painfully stupid-looking dildo hat, that alone was/is enough to nix luclin models for me.

Everything about half-elves other than their awesome plate helm looks absolutely retarded on the classic model. It's a good thing every half-elf is a bard, so no one has to see how amazingly stupid they look in chain. It's lambent/ss as far as the eye can see.

[Raavak]

Casino should be put in~

[kaev]

Everything about half-elves other than their awesome plate helm looks absolutely retarded on the classic model. It's a good thing every half-elf is a bard, so no one has to see how amazingly stupid they look in chain. It's lambent/ss as far as the eye can see.

lol, Half-elf chain is cool except the hat, which still isn't half as fugly as the luclin plate hat. Also, any Half-elf Paladin or Warrior is much cooler than any of the 63000000 fotm Half-elf bards littering this server.

[Leddy]

Casino should be put in~

this 1,000 times over

[t0lkien]

Now do iksar, which is much better (minus swimming change).

Or human, half-elf, any elf-based model, or barbarians. All significantly better. Short races, ogres, and trolls get kind of boned, but hey you can leave classic models on for them.

This just proves to me again how subjective art is. All of those models are horrid IMO - so bad it's cringe worthy. And the animations on them? Have you played a HE, or a WE? Argh.

[planeofdreams]

I think if Classic was the golden age then Luclin and PoP were certainly the silver. I disagree where the progression server voted to stop at GoD, they should have stopped at PoP.

When Luclin dropped, I admit I was excited to get a computer that could run the new models but today I prefer the classic ones. So, if I prefer the classic models now its because of hypercorrection on my part, not nostalgia.

Whether classic or improved, what's always been important to me is that I played with a consistent enough style to feel immersed. As new expansions came out and the new zones progressed in style and graphics this was all undone. Eventually the disunity of the game world is what drove me away.

[webrunner5]

It is a known fact that luclin ruins this game.

If we do anything beyond velious, it will be custom content. I could easily see the luclin era updates to zones like runnyeye happening to make those dungeons worth visiting (upgrade to ALLOY instead of iron)

and other stuff possibly taken from luclin and beyond content. This stuff could be implemented in such a way that the whole old world isn't more of a desolate wasteland than it already is.

If Luclin was so bad why is the quote from Wiki suggesting the opposite . Sure looks like somebody liked Luclin, PoP.

"Verant, from 1999 to 2001, and SOE, from 2001 to 14 January 2004, issued formal statements giving some indications of the number of EverQuest subscriptions and peak numbers of players online at any given moment.[12] These records show more than 225,000 subscriptions on 1 November 1999,[citation needed] with an increase to more than 450,000 subscriptions by 25 September 2003"

[thugcruncher]

Luclin ended up being a really solid expansion - it just sucked at first. Anyhow, long post incoming.

I'd go as far as to say the modrod change was the greatest change to raiding in EQ's history. If you have never raided Velious or Luclin before the change - you basically have magicians face a wall and throw 100s of modrods to the floor so the CHeal rotating clerics never go OOM as your DPS autoattacks whatever bad dude that can't possibly kill your tank getting CHealed every 2 seconds. Post rod change, everything got huge HP nerfs and modrods received a cooldown.

Bazaar > EC. I guess there's some people that enjoy the people aspect of EC, but I liked being able to PvP (arena in bazaar) while buying/selling. I enjoyed being able to leave a second account online selling stuff, but I'm someone who would rather play outside of EC.

The whole cats on the moon thing is overblown since Shar Vhal is way the fuck in the middle of no where. I think I went there twice over my entire course of EQ live.

The spires shrinked the world, but using them was still far less desirable than getting a port. It took up to 30 minutes to go from one limited destination to another.

Like every expansion, itemization was fucked at first, but ended up being great. The AC/HP/Mana difference between Luclin and Velious was very small, but the difference was focus effects, more available ATK gear, and more FT gear. Basically, gear became a lot more attractive for non-tanks. Contrast this to Kunark where I choose to gear my 5th alt over my main because a Crude Stein at 20pp is 95% as effective as an Insignia Protector at 150k.

The concept of elemental and bane damage is interesting, but never fully realized. Elemental damage was generally regarded as 1/3rd as effective as weapon damage; however, the aggro per swing of elemental damage is the same as weapon damage. In other words, they could have made proc-less weapons desirable by tanks but not DPS.

Luclin started to modernize raids. You started to see encounters that weren't just a hitbox with an AOE. I posted about this before, but I think the reason Velious encounters are so well received compared to the more complex Luclin encounters has to do with the NPC models being the same and the bleaker environment. If you're not sold on that idea, go look at how well Gates of Discord was received from an aesthetic standpoint.

SSra Temple was one of the better raid zones EQ ever put out. Every encounter there was quality with the exception of Xerkizh the Creator who was basically a Velious-era fight carried over.

I never did Acrylia 1.0 outside of the Ring of Fire and Burrower. Ring of Fire was an amazing fight when it actually worked. I think only Ring of Valor ever ended up doing Inner Acrylia. There was the whole Grimling War raid that never got done much until EQmac years later.

Vex Thal was a huge disappointment outside of the loot. I'll give this point up to the Luclin haters. So. much. trash. The zone was pretty, the loot was awesome, and blinding Eoms were hilarious, but still a piece of shit zone.

Toward the end of Velious, you started to see a return to groupable gear not being terrible with the revamp of Chardok. This continued in Luclin and probably culminated with the revamp of Cazic Thule. Cazic Thule post-revamp was fucking awesome as an exp zone.

AAs give people progression outside of gear (raiding).

And for the first time in EQ's history, the developers tried to give a fuck about balance. Druids become ok again, rangers stop sucking, paladins get something to do on raids, mages stop being vending machines, necros become a real DPS class, wizards stop sucking in sustained fights, etc.

Luclin, fuck yeah.

you're beginning to sell me on luclin

[a_desert_madman_01]

The Nexus, the Bazaar, PoK, stat inflation, loss of friends and job, etc. None of this killed EverQuest for me. I was okay with every bit of it. What killed it for me was the revamp to the Commonlands, Freeport and the deserts. My heart wept and my soul died a bit when the realization set in that I would never see that blocky EC tunnel ever again. My time at T1 was done.

</3

[webrunner5]

The Nexus, the Bazaar, PoK, stat inflation, loss of friends and job, etc. None of this killed EverQuest for me. I was okay with every bit of it. What killed it for me was the revamp to the Commonlands, Freeport and the deserts. My heart wept and my soul died a bit when the realization set in that I would never see that blocky EC tunnel ever again. My time at T1 was done.

</3

I would totally agree with that statement. :(

[Zuranthium]

That's a huge thing modern MMO's are getting wrong with their design - overly pristine/crisp visuals. The sense of foreboding and/or character created by so much of the classic Everquest World has been completely unmatched for 12 years. You need more deep shadows, more rough edges, and more ambiguity to truly engage a person's imagination. Until we get technology that fully places our entire senses and personage within an alternate World, ala Inception, then games are always going to need to follow a lot of the same visual principles as painting/photography/film. There's a huge difference between the typical car commercial and art. Right now, MMO's are aiming for car commercial.

[Tiggles]

That's a huge thing modern MMO's are getting wrong with their design - overly pristine/crisp visuals. The sense of foreboding and/or character created by so much of the classic Everquest World has been completely unmatched for 12 years. You need more deep shadows, more rough edges, and more ambiguity to truly engage a person's imagination. Until we get technology that fully places our entire senses and personage within an alternate World, ala Inception, then games are always going to need to follow a lot of the same visual principles as painting/photography/film. There's a huge difference between the typical car commercial and art. Right now, MMO's are aiming for car commercial.

[mwatt]

(Quote taken from Pasi's post about G.O.D.)

"The majority of the playerbase was basically confined to a few really shitty instances simply because they didn't have the gear to progress. If you look back at this time, you'll see most of the 'old uber' guilds died off around this time and there was a changing of the guard of top dog guilds."

^ This, especially the italics (I added). This is what caused the "death" of the game: bifurcation of the player-base. The problem was initiated in PoP, with all the keying and locking of casuals out of many many zones that they helped pay for, and with all the loss of equipment that went hand in hand.

[SCB]

The sense of foreboding and/or character created by so much of the classic Everquest World has been completely unmatched for 12 years.

Disagree 100%. I don't see what anyone thinks is special or unique about EQ classic's "art". All posts like this just read like nostalgic bullshit to me.

[Millburn]

Disagree 100%. I don't see what anyone thinks is special or unique about EQ classic's "art". All posts like this just read like nostalgic bullshit to me.

To me it's a lot like the differences between a book and a movie. You need ambiguity to allow your imagination to go wild. Does that make sense? If not then look no further than lingerie.

[SCB]

To me it's a lot like the differences between a book and a movie. You need ambiguity to allow your imagination to go wild. Does that make sense? If not then look no further than lingerie.

To be honest this is the first time I've ever even begun to understand why people feel this way. I still disagree, but at least now I don't think it's just pure nostalgia.

Good comparison man.

[spoils]

Casino should be put in~

YES, cause i want just a small chance at winning a guise! should only have tickets that can possibly redeem nodrop only items...

[Quylein]

I think there is more to the imagination in Everquest

[Borador]

First, maybe I missed it in a previous post, but WORLD OF WARCRAFT!!!! 2004, right after GoD, it took a LOT of people from EQ. It also provided the first real competition to EQ from a game design standpoint. In an effort to fix EQ issues it created other issues. You then have this back and forth about what is good and what is bad. People like to look in game, but you also have to look at what is happening in the real world. Five years is a long time to do anything, let alone play a video game. Some people are just not wired to stick around, no matter what changes were or were not made. Graduation, wife, girlfriend, kids, job? EQ wasn't "best" at any certain time in game, it was best when I could play til 4am or skip classes to stay at home and level.

To me it's a lot like the differences between a book and a movie. You need ambiguity to allow your imagination to go wild. Does that make sense? If not then look no further than lingerie.Agreed. The only thing I'd add is that by lacking in certain areas, it allowed the brain to focus more on other things which enhanced different aspects of the game.

[myriverse]

Disagree 100%. I don't see what anyone thinks is special or unique about EQ classic's "art". All posts like this just read like nostalgic bullshit to me.
Even in 1999, it was something I tolerated against my will, because the rest of the game was top notch. Boxy edges and awkward poses. Eyuck. Of course, I'm from the Atari generation, so anything over that is sweet to me.

[Kika Maslyaka]

First, maybe I missed it in a previous post, but WORLD OF WARCRAFT!!!! 2004, right after GoD, it took a LOT of people from EQ. It also provided the first real competition to EQ from a game design standpoint. In an effort to fix EQ issues it created other issues. You then have this back and forth about what is good and what is bad. People like to look in game, but you also have to look at what is happening in the real world. Five years is a long time to do anything, let alone play a video game. Some people are just not wired to stick around, no matter what changes were or were not made. Graduation, wife, girlfriend, kids, job? EQ wasn't "best" at any certain time in game, it was best when I could play til 4am or skip classes to stay at home and level.


+1

I wish I have played WoW during Vanilla...

[t0lkien]

WoW during Beta was wonderful. Vanilla was good for a while.... and it was all downhill from there.

[Kika Maslyaka]

WoW during Beta was wonderful. Vanilla was good for a while.... and it was all downhill from there.

well, imho, Vanilla was the time when it was a bit easier than EQ, but still with EQ spirit for grouping and raiding. It had it share of issue too. I believe that BC era was the Golden Age when they got things just right.
But then they started making leveling and raiding requirement just too easy, specially with CataPanda. The saddest part is that they improved gear that can be quested/obtained solo so much, that there is no point of doing any of the 20-60 dungeons, and that's what I wanted to experience the most.
I also didn't like then altering some of the classes, like when they simplified Hunter pets not to require feeding and upkeeping happiness.

If there would be a classical/BC WoW emu without the extra xp, instant levels, etc, I would gladly play it

[heartbrand]

What a lot of people who companion about wow and eq post velious seem to dislike is new content. It's like you want to never upgrade your gear you got from guk or leave the original zones and starting area. Sorry to tell you but MMO's can't survive without a steady influx of new content. People aren't going to be happy with the new content if it doesn't provide upgrades for their characters.

[Kika Maslyaka]

What a lot of people who companion about wow and eq post velious seem to dislike is new content. It's like you want to never upgrade your gear you got from guk or leave the original zones and starting area. Sorry to tell you but MMO's can't survive without a steady influx of new content. People aren't going to be happy with the new content if it doesn't provide upgrades for their characters.

I disagree. (well at least I feel this is not true for me).
I wholeheartedly welcome new content, since after all raids are done and all gear sets completed what else there to do?

The problem with new content in all MMO is that its done WRONG. Theme mismatching aside, balance and gear become out of whack NOT because they add better gear, but because they make better gear more easily obtainable than it was before.

Lets take this abstract example. Let suppose that you had a 10/22 weapon dropping from lev 50 content in original EQ. When In Kunark level goes up to 60, I can rightfully expect that a better weapon would drop from lev 55/60 content.
But what happens is that Kunark offers 10/22 at lev 45, and then 10/20 at lev 50, hence devaluing old hard earned gear.

It happened in EQ, less noticeable during Kunark/Velious era and A LOT more noticeably during Luclin/PoP/later eras. It happened in EQ2, WoW etc. Specially in WoW it happened in such ridiculous amount in Wrath+ era that solo gear from lev 50 in new expansion was better that hard dungeon group gear from lev 60 from previous expansion.

So, please do add new content, but don't ruin gear progression that has already formed, unless you want to turn entire old content into ghost-town like its happened in EQ, EQ2, WoW etc.

[Zuranthium]

You don't need new zones to have new content. What's IN the zones can change, drastically (even without sandboxing). This has a carry-over effect to equipment - if zones/encounters are constantly changing, then it means you need different modifications on your gear to constantly have the 100% best setup for an encounter, which means players will constantly be seeking out a larger pool of gear to keep in their bank and face any given encounter with.

Also, actually, a lot of people don't like needing to change the look of their gear and are very happy with creating an individual look that they find most appealing and can use for years. Like if Bards could always wear Lambent armor, and just had a dozen different sets of Lambent armor with different stat mods, a lot of people would enjoy that the most.

[Borador]

You don't need new zones to have new content. What's IN the zones can change, drastically (even without sandboxing). This has a carry-over effect to equipment - if zones/encounters are constantly changing, then it means you need different modifications on your gear to constantly have the 100% best setup for an encounter, which means players will constantly be seeking out a larger pool of gear to keep in their bank and face any given encounter with.

Also, actually, a lot of people don't like needing to change the look of their gear and are very happy with creating an individual look that they find most appealing and can use for years. Like if Bards could always wear Lambent armor, and just had a dozen different sets of Lambent armor with different stat mods, a lot of people would enjoy that the most.oh my... Who are these people?! I like gear options but many games go overboard with the multiple sets of resist gear. EQ was good for a bit with just the need for resist jewelry

But the SAME item look forever? I think the best part about MMOs is either showing off your gear or seeing someone else with some amazing item you would dream about getting.

Also, I look at games as works of art. At some point you have to stop adding to it and just say, its done. That can be hard to do.

[Halius]

What a lot of people who companion about wow and eq post velious seem to dislike is new content. It's like you want to never upgrade your gear you got from guk or leave the original zones and starting area. Sorry to tell you but MMO's can't survive without a steady influx of new content. People aren't going to be happy with the new content if it doesn't provide upgrades for their characters.

I think the problem isn't the fact that new content is released, it is the fact that the new content so dramatically overpowers old content that people don't like it. For example from Kunark to Velious, the Kunark gear you can obtain is still relevant until you get up to Velious, where the gear is better but not by too much that it makes someone in Kunark gear irrelevant.

The problem in WoW was that when they released their first expansion BC, the green drops greatly overpowered any epic gear you may have obtained doing 10/20/40 man raids. It was just incredibly disappointing that all the gear you worked hard for was no longer relevant. And they have done that in every expansion since. EQ did it right by only slightly improving the gear in Velious so that old content still mattered when you were gearing up.

[SCB]

The problem in WoW was that when they released their first expansion BC, the green drops greatly overpowered any epic gear you may have obtained doing 10/20/40 man raids. It was just incredibly disappointing that all the gear you worked hard for was no longer relevant. And they have done that in every expansion since.

That's not a problem. That's a solution to a problem. It's a solution you don't like and I'm lukewarm on, but it's an attempt to solve the very real problem caused by "backflagging" and such.

I'm not a huge fan of how WoW went about resolving the issue, and wish 5man instances took more of a role there, but I can understand why they'd go that route.