When did EQ mounts come along?

[Kekoa]

I noticed that I haven't seen people on mounts at all, so I was wondering when they added mounts? Was it in Luclin? How did/do you guys feel about EQ mounts?

[diplo]

luclin. they were pretty stupid.

[Tewaz]

They were good and bad.

Good = med without sitting and great money sink to balance the economy.

Bad = stupid looking.

[Lagaidh]

I have to admit, I loved Holy Steed AA. There was a time when knights had that as the fastest mode of travel, just a tic faster than a maxxed bard. You'd sloooowly catch up to one and have time to type elaborate emotes of waving as you ooched past.

I hated the Luclin models though =( forced me to use them for that horse. I also hated that the mounts accelerated and decelerated. I just wished it started at the final speed augment like SoW.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

They waited to introduce horses until travel was so nerfed the horse was just a plat sink, something to show off. As you traveled to spires to get insta-ported nearly everywhere.

Only fun was traveling to the umbral plains across maiden's eye. could get a pretty decent train goin.

[Swish]

As a shaman I enjoyed the horse... being able to canni without the stand/sit element was excellent :)

[Cyph]

EQ and mounts, *shiver*....

[Clark]

luclin. they were pretty stupid.

They weren't that bad

[webrunner5]

The first ones sucked because you could not see past their head. But it sure beat sitting down all the time. :D

[Tehwoot]

Luclin was the decline of Everquest. I enjoyed the beastlord class, but everything else just blew. The mounts were not needed and just some way for SOE to keep up with WOW and it's laziness.

[rixardion]

Luclin was the decline of Everquest. I enjoyed the beastlord class, but everything else just blew. The mounts were not needed and just some way for SOE to keep up with WOW and it's laziness.

WoW was far from being released at that point.

[Mirana]

Luclin was the decline of Everquest. I enjoyed the beastlord class, but everything else just blew. The mounts were not needed and just some way for SOE to keep up with WOW and it's laziness.

Yet another ignorant Luclin hater. As the poster above me said, Luclin was released 3 years before WoW.

[Tehwoot]

You might be right, but I remember seeing announcements and so forth around the time luclin came out. My MMO timeline is sorta squashed together.

[Swish]

Yet another ignorant Luclin hater. As the poster above me said, Luclin was released 3 years before WoW.

P99 Cats on the Moon 2016

[Andervin]

Not being able to stop/start them on a dime was annoying as hell and made them unusable as an enchanter doing CC. Accurate I guess, but annoying. WoW did mounts right. /dodge thrown tomato for mentioning WoW

[uygi]

My favorite part was how in beta the FAQ included a question about mounts, and they more or less said "no fucking way". SOE did such a 180 from 989.

Tried to find the beta FAQ but it doesn't look like the wayback machine ever picked it up =(

[Weekapaug]

They said no way to bags larger than 10 slots for over a decade, siting some coding reason that would make it virtually impossible. Now you can get massive bags.

I'm sure it's total coincidence that they sell them on the cash store. lol

[nilbog]

Not being able to stop/start them on a dime was annoying as hell and made them unusable as an enchanter doing CC.

Here's how I made this work for my magician.

Step 1. Use old character models.
Step 2. Use Amulet of Necropotence for (luclin) skeleton model.
Step 3. For instant stop, remove Illusion: Skeleton. It would put you in old model and dismiss horse.

[Treefall]

I really liked mounts, and the idea of them, at the time they were released.

However, looking back I think they were a horrible thing to implement in EverQuest.

The mounts gave a perma-med, fast-movement stance. It changed the game dramatically in my viewpoint, at least in terms of leveling and small groups.

They were immediately no longer a luxury but rather a requirement.

In my mind they were a small part of destroying the vastness of the world and class uniqueness. Equalizing travel was a first and easy step for SOE to make without facing too much resistance.

As changes go, however, they snowball. The fast travel of Luclin wasn't fast enough so even faster travel was added. The mount speeds of Luclin, outside of knights, weren't fast enough so even faster mounts were added. Then it was easy to step into (and it started in Luclin) no other class has this, let's give it to this.

I digress, but I feel like the implementation of mounts, and Luclin in general, really started a major shift in the core gameplay of EverQuest for the negative. If you look at the monster EQLive is today it all stems off of the changes started with Luclin. Kunark and Velious very much kept EQ true...Luclin, PoP, etc - not so much.

Just my 2 cents.

So looking back...I hate EQ mounts. With a passion. Would I be okay if only one class had them as a unique ability (say both knights), yes...everyone - no.

[Spitty]

As a shaman I enjoyed the horse... being able to canni without the stand/sit element was excellent :)

This, but holy christ was the barb model atrocious. Lost virtually all the unique armor looks from Velious too, which was awful. I worked my ass off for Kael armor only to see it suddenly vanish upon Luclin's release.

Maybe that's the root of why I think Luclin is such an ugly expansion overall. Ugly, generic, blobby barb models.

[Andervin]

Here's how I made this work for my magician.

Step 1. Use old character models.
Step 2. Use Amulet of Necropotence for (luclin) skeleton model.
Step 3. For instant stop, remove Illusion: Skeleton. It would put you in old model and dismiss horse.

Very clever.

[Tehwoot]

I really liked mounts, and the idea of them, at the time they were released.

However, looking back I think they were a horrible thing to implement in EverQuest.

The mounts gave a perma-med, fast-movement stance. It changed the game dramatically in my viewpoint, at least in terms of leveling and small groups.

They were immediately no longer a luxury but rather a requirement.

In my mind they were a small part of destroying the vastness of the world and class uniqueness. Equalizing travel was a first and easy step for SOE to make without facing too much resistance.

As changes go, however, they snowball. The fast travel of Luclin wasn't fast enough so even faster travel was added. The mount speeds of Luclin, outside of knights, weren't fast enough so even faster mounts were added. Then it was easy to step into (and it started in Luclin) no other class has this, let's give it to this.

I digress, but I feel like the implementation of mounts, and Luclin in general, really started a major shift in the core gameplay of EverQuest for the negative. If you look at the monster EQLive is today it all stems off of the changes started with Luclin. Kunark and Velious very much kept EQ true...Luclin, PoP, etc - not so much.

Just my 2 cents.

So looking back...I hate EQ mounts. With a passion. Would I be okay if only one class had them as a unique ability (say both knights), yes...everyone - no.

this

[Weekapaug]

They weren't immediately a requirement. They were so expensive until the LoY ones not everyone could get them. Not that the drogmor were cheap. That was post POP. And you couldn't use them indoors. Still can't.

Now they pretty much give them away, though.

I'm not a fan because I don't like the movement and camera view, but the constant medding without sit aggo is too good to pass on and makes boxing infinately smoother. Not sure I've ever used one for travel, even my SK with the selos speed AA mount.

[Lagaidh]

Here's how I made this work for my magician.

Step 1. Use old character models.
Step 2. Use Amulet of Necropotence for (luclin) skeleton model.
Step 3. For instant stop, remove Illusion: Skeleton. It would put you in old model and dismiss horse.

When I finally DID land an AoN, I turned those luclin models right the fuck back off for male dwarves for sure! I also liked being an undead paladin =)

[fadetree]

I really liked mounts, and the idea of them, at the time they were released.

However, looking back I think they were a horrible thing to implement in EverQuest.

The mounts gave a perma-med, fast-movement stance. It changed the game dramatically in my viewpoint, at least in terms of leveling and small groups.

They were immediately no longer a luxury but rather a requirement.

In my mind they were a small part of destroying the vastness of the world and class uniqueness. Equalizing travel was a first and easy step for SOE to make without facing too much resistance.

As changes go, however, they snowball. The fast travel of Luclin wasn't fast enough so even faster travel was added. The mount speeds of Luclin, outside of knights, weren't fast enough so even faster mounts were added. Then it was easy to step into (and it started in Luclin) no other class has this, let's give it to this.

I digress, but I feel like the implementation of mounts, and Luclin in general, really started a major shift in the core gameplay of EverQuest for the negative. If you look at the monster EQLive is today it all stems off of the changes started with Luclin. Kunark and Velious very much kept EQ true...Luclin, PoP, etc - not so much.

Just my 2 cents.

So looking back...I hate EQ mounts. With a passion. Would I be okay if only one class had them as a unique ability (say both knights), yes...everyone - no.

Yes, this exactly. It's why I say that people usually misunderstand how game design works. The heart of a game, any game, is what you *can't* do, not what you can do. Making things 'better', 'fixing' things, ( i.e. removing things you can't do ) very rarely, if ever improves the game.

[bomaroast]

I digress, but I feel like the implementation of mounts, and Luclin in general, really started a major shift in the core gameplay of EverQuest for the negative. If you look at the monster EQLive is today it all stems off of the changes started with Luclin. Kunark and Velious very much kept EQ true...Luclin, PoP, etc - not so much.


The game had to be pushed forward or it would have turned into a troll's haven much like p99. Perhaps the changes introduced in luclin weren't the best, but they were still pretty dang fun. Raiding in PoP and OoW was a lot of fun and worth changes to the game.

[fadetree]

Troll's haven?

The door is that way, dude.

[Weekapaug]

The thing that's often lost in these discussions here is while everything did inflate and a lot of things got trivialized, other things got harder and more interesting, too.

So while you could suddenly click a book to get someplace, instead of running, finding ports or taking a boat or some combo for an hour, you took that book to kill mobs that were a lot more difficult than what was in classic. Exp mobs that not just summon, but enrage, rampage, flurry, and throw AoEs. Faction work needed that was meaningful. Raid mobs on a silver platter that required no trash clearing that did require every single person in a raid not just doing their job, but not a single person fucking up, too. Mobs that required every melee to change weapon types at certain points. Mobs that would spawn adds that would likely wipe the raid if one person did the wrong thing. List goes on and on. Yes, some things got easier, but others got harder and more complex. Not to mention gearing up a toon for that. Focuses, effects, augs. It took a few expansions for it to develop, but I think AA is an amazing and very fun aspect of the game and has been since it did.

Over 5, 10, 15 years a game has to progress and that's, understandably, going to turn a lot of people off. But progress it must. The original dev team went to great pains to not inflate the game while continuing to keep it in check, but I think Velious was the peak for that. Whatever expansion came after was going to have to go in some new direction and we would all be here bitching about that instead of Luclin. Or we would be talking about that great game EverQuest that died in its fourth or fifth expansion because it went completely stale and everybody moved on because it simply didn't engage enough players to warrant serious development anymore and 300 people kept playing.....Pretty much what happened to DAoC. Even WoW, the bohemouth it is, has been reworked from the ground up with about every expansion as I understand it (i don't play). Because games must progress or they die.

Don't get me wrong, I love the classic era. I played WAY too much EQ from the first few weeks in 99 thru TSS...Like 8 years....And the classic era is my favorite because that's where it all started, but with a few notable exceptions (like GoD) I loved all of it. Because for everything that got easier, there was a new challenge. It just changed, is all, because it had to.

I recently went back to live for the first time in years. Games still fun.

[Droog007]

For a brief time on live, you could have old models ON and still use the mount clicky. It put a buff on you and you gained standing med, but the horse didn't appear and there was no runspeed change.

THAT was awesome. Everything else about mounts in EQ is / was / forever shall be ri-goddam-diculous.

I did some /feedbacks at the time suggesting that they put in an AA for standing med... in retrospect, it doesn't have the same needed plat sink, but they could have made it depend on some other expensive object...

[HawkMasterson1999]

The Emp horse is still my most prized possession on live. Gave up my position at the top of my guilds DKP charts for it.

[Atmas]

Here's how I made this work for my magician.

Step 1. Use old character models.
Step 2. Use Amulet of Necropotence for (luclin) skeleton model.
Step 3. For instant stop, remove Illusion: Skeleton. It would put you in old model and dismiss horse.

Yes, this was awesome for PvP on my wiz. Had the horse from the Emperor, could come out of warp on people and start nuking.

Also... this seems to be a suspect amount of knowledge for a Luclin hater. (>_<)

[nilbog]

Yes, this was awesome for PvP on my wiz. Had the horse from the Emperor, could come out of warp on people and start nuking.

Also... this seems to be a suspect amount of knowledge for a Luclin hater. (>_<)

Know your enemy.

[Nads]

Yes, this was awesome for PvP on my wiz. Had the horse from the Emperor, could come out of warp on people and start nuking.

Also... this seems to be a suspect amount of knowledge for a Luclin hater. (>_<)

Nilbog is known for his hate of said expansion.

[Treefall]

Nilbog is known for his hate of said expansion.

Secretly he roleplays a Cat from the Moon on EQLive.

[Joseppi]

P99 Cats on the Moon 2016

[webrunner5]

Cats are COOL. :D Beastdlord best class ever.

[Whiteberry]

WoW mounts wayy better