Anybody else never experience Velious on live?

[Portasaurus]

I feel like the whole server played on Velious back in the day. Unfortunately for me, dear old dad stopped paying for EQ before Velious came out, so I am a complete and total Velious virgin.

Side question: Anyone have a good grasp on Velious baking? I'd be interested in conspiring!

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

I feel like the whole server played on Velious back in the day. Unfortunately for me, dear old dad stopped paying for EQ before Velious came out, so I am a complete and total Velious virgin.

Side question: Anyone have a good grasp on Velious baking? I'd be interested in conspiring!

I experienced killing aow on a raid during luclin era. I basically missed the whole thing.

[Swish]

One thing I will say, its overhyped in the sense that people haven't had any new content for ages. If it followed the classic timeline the launch mood would have been "oh yeah I remember Velious, Thurgadin, Vindi, NToV...looking forward to those again" rather than foaming at the mouth and posting indirect "how long now?" threads every 24 hours.

[Handull]

I only ever had kunark back in the day, had to make sure not to click the pok books years later on a progression server or I crashed

[Lazie]

One thing I will say, its overhyped in the sense that people haven't had any new content for ages. If it followed the classic timeline the launch mood would have been "oh yeah I remember Velious, Thurgadin, Vindi, NToV...looking forward to those again" rather than foaming at the mouth and posting indirect "how long now?" threads every 24 hours.

I don't think it is overhyped at all. It is hyped extremely high for sure. However the reason that hype is there is because of the huge leap forward in raiding content and pixel upgrades. People know what comes with Velious and they know how big a leap forward it is in a lot of areas. It is the Crown Jewel of classic Everquest before things started getting changed with Luclin that a lot of players disliked. Does the long wait make players more eager for it ? Yep you bet. However the hype for it would be there regardless of if it had released a year after Kunark or now.

[Kazi]

I actually didn't like Velious, but I never had a guild so that might be why. Still some of my favorite zones are in that expansion.

[Hailto]

I feel like the whole server played on Velious back in the day. Unfortunately for me, dear old dad stopped paying for EQ before Velious came out, so I am a complete and total Velious virgin.

Side question: Anyone have a good grasp on Velious baking? I'd be interested in conspiring!

I never really raided on live, all of this is new to me, which im thankful for cause it makes it a lot more fun. I have a general memory of some of the zones though.

[Rhambuk]

I did some mid level exp during the velious era and some raiding luclin era, mostly aow and some tov. I didn't mind not doing it mainly because I never really liked velious.

its true...there are people that don't like velious. Waiting for incoming ban...

[blondeattk]

Velious was atmospheric but at the time i actually disliked alot of the zones. Hated the way that WW was such a long travel to get to......a real arse when you wipe on a dragon!

Loads good eyecandy, but dont over do the exp in this expansion...mobs have more hps(velks is overrated for exp). Still imo more fun than karnors and seb.

A definate sense of grandeur about this expansion.....kunark has a feeling of history about it, but velious is about SCALE (as in BIG not dwagons)

[Rhambuk]

A definate sense of grandeur about this expansion.....kunark has a feeling of history about it, but velious is about SCALE (as in BIG not dwagons)

Why I loved kunark over velious, every zone in kunark has a history you can see and fell. Velious is just a massive wastelad, even the zones with lore/history its extremely lacking. simply wasnt impressed...even by the content, no idea how people can say tov > VP except for loots. it just doesnt add up

[radditsu]

Devs should mod in 3 dog talking about the frozen wasteland.

[Thrilla]

velious was eq's best expansion, nuff said

[Erasong]

meh. i felt like it was wasteland.. followed by well hidden pockets of lore and history. i enjoyed it. you had to "rediscover" the interesting places.

[radditsu]

PoP was eq's best expansion, nuff said

[Bigazz]

for a non raider the " feel " and autenticety of lore may or may not be more grafted out and visual in kunark (ruins of statues , various mobs more in tune with the history like iksar ghosts etc) this is true, but if you really search for the velious lore in books, various hailing on npcs, you will find that it is just as rich just a tad more circumspect. Quests and events and how the zones interconnect in velious is in my opinion sligthly more " belivable " in velious than in kunark.

For a raider however there is a huge diffrence, going from:
3 indoor (vox naggy, rage)
3 outdoor dragons+ ixi (talen gorie sev)
2 key bosses Trak and VS
4 planar bosses (dracho ct inny and maestro)
And maybe counting royal family of chardok, yael as well
and the bottlenecked VP as sorta the pinacle that most casual raiders never see.

TO IN VELIOUS ....

Pog Tunare and her subbosses.
Mischief ,
Kael and all the nameds in there, including tormax and statue idol and aow,
whoushi, kelorek dar zlandicar, yelinak, sonta, lodizal, ring war, all of ww, the 3 sections of temple of veeshan , faction grinds, more armor quests, more quests overall, tofs, more gear with focus, sleepers tomb, dain , velks, and so on ...
its a TONN more smaller and bigger nameds and things to do. and they are most of the time not as pushovers as kunarks zergables are. bosses in kunark are limited to 32k hp. whilst there are trash in velious that have more.....

AND you can backtrack and do older content in addition to the new in velious, maybe it is time to go for some in vp , or get that trak bp, or vs pants etc etc .
TO sum it up, content is more than trippled, current content is freed up for more and no bottleneck flawed progression like in kunark where a few guilds could block the rest. (you can teoreticallly block others in velious as well, but will need 10 times as much effort and the blocked have plenty of other directions to go anyway)

imo ... win win win ...... cant wait.....

Bigazz.
Raid leader of BDA.

[Hollywood]

Just be thankful old expansions weren't all end game content only.
From level 30 on up, there's plenty to do in Velious.

[Bazia]

I didn't care for Velious as it was the beginning of the end of EQ for me with the insanely inflated weapon/armor stats

[Buriedpast]

How inflated?

Inflated was luclin. Velious was a very good natural progression.

In luclin, the difference between a 200aa char in Sra/VT gear was godly. It was an entire different game. An absolute top end char in velious had 1k more hp, did 20-25% more dps (not 100% more ontop of velious), had 2-5 new abilities and was hugely unbalanced.

Kunark was a huge change, but a balancing one for a growing game. Vel continued this nicely. Luclin...kill it with fire, as much as I loved the dungeon design in ssra.

[myriverse]

Only things I liked about Velious:
1. TOFS
2. Velks
3. Ring War

The rest can DIAI (die in an iceberg).

[Cyrano]

Velious was atmospheric but at the time i actually disliked alot of the zones. Hated the way that WW was such a long travel to get to......a real arse when you wipe on a dragon!

Loads good eyecandy, but dont over do the exp in this expansion...mobs have more hps(velks is overrated for exp). Still imo more fun than karnors and seb.

A definate sense of grandeur about this expansion.....kunark has a feeling of history about it, but velious is about SCALE (as in BIG not dwagons)

This guy gets it. Velious is huge and unforgiving, it's the final frontier of Norrath before we went to the moon. The fights are harder, everything is bigger, and the rewards are greater. The progression makes perfect sense and deservedly is considered the crown jewel of EQ.

Many people would say this expansion created modern MMOs more so than any single title or expansion in any game since. Yeah we had some raids before, but this created tiered raiding, incorporated massive, rewarding quests (which they got right with epics in Kunark) on a more inclusive level (ring war was usually an open invite with people from all over the place helping out, not just the main guild - it was a community event), and created the true hardcore raiding environment where world firsts mattered.

On top of that, if you really get into it, there is tons of lore incorporated into the three main factions and the part you play in their dalliances. Quests for champions and quests for traitors, and not just collect a few things in turn in like we got in classic, but long, multi leveled quests that require trade skills, single camps, groups, and raids. They basically made epic quests available to everyone instead of just individual classes. Did you know there were quests in SS with incredible rewards that weren't solved until almost 5 years after the release of Velious? That zone alone carries so much lore and history it's mind boggling.

We haven't even gotten into Growth, ToV, or Sleeper's Tomb. To say this expansion is lacking in lore is to show a lack of experience with this expansion. I would suggest that you guys who weren't fans of it get into a decent guild (not saying you aren't) and start doing stuff. There is so much to do in Velious starting around level 30 that we'll be a happy server for a long time. Even if you aren't in the top guilds, you'll find great things to do and with the community on P99 10th rings shouldn't be too hard to get. Hell I won't be surprised if BDA or another class R gets the first 10th ring.

[Rhambuk]

deservedly is considered the crown jewel of EQ.


I couldn't read anymore. I...I just couldn't

[Byrjun]

How inflated?

Inflated was luclin. Velious was a very good natural progression.

The problem with Luclin was AA, not gear. Actually, a LOT of high end Luclin gear would simply rot because it couldn't compare to the high end (mostly Vulak) Velious gear.

Verant made a mistake, and they realized it. Velious gear was too good. Every "upgrade" in Luclin had about half the AC of the Velious gear it was meant to replace.

Going from Velious to Luclin gear was about the smallest amount of "power creep" of any expansion. This was one of the many complaints against Luclin, and PoP kicked up the power creep full scale again (but a lot of stuff still couldn't compare to the AC of Velious loot).

[Rhambuk]

Release velious with no loot!

I'm just curious how many people will still claim its the #1 expansion

[Dakidd4990]

Why do people hate on AA's so much? I freakin LOVED AA's. It gave me a reason to keep playing day in and day out besides just logging in for scheduled raids. AA's are probably the biggest reason I kept playing EQ for ~6 years. If you wanna hate on PoK fast travel and mounts and shit like that? Sure I get it. But AA? Come on

I've missed the AA system in every MMO I've played since I quit EQ lol. Get to max lvl and get all my dungeon/quest gear then I just walk around bored as fuck til raid time or screw around with alts/pvp to pass the time til raid time. AA's gave me something that felt like I was meaningfully progressing my character outside of raid environment at max level. What's to hate about that?

[Rhambuk]

Why do people hate on AA's so much? I freakin LOVED AA's. It gave me a reason to keep playing day in and day out besides just logging in for scheduled raids.

it Forced me to play everyday and grind, after I hit the level cap it was nice to be able to take a step back explore do some quests help some noobs etc etc. With AA out you HAVE to be grinding all the time to have 2500+ aa.

gamebreaking abilities... if youre super hardcore and love grinding not stop and soloing shit you shouldn't be able to than theyre great.

if your a little casual they suck, real hard.

[Byrjun]

Why do people hate on AA's so much? I freakin LOVED AA's. It gave me a reason to keep playing day in and day out besides just logging in for scheduled raids. AA's are probably the biggest reason I kept playing EQ for ~6 years. If you wanna hate on PoK fast travel and mounts and shit like that? Sure I get it. But AA? Come on

I've missed the AA system in every MMO I've played since I quit EQ lol. Get to max lvl and get all my dungeon/quest gear then I just walk around bored as fuck til raid time or screw around with alts/pvp to pass the time til raid time. AA's gave me something that felt like I was meaningfully progressing my character outside of raid environment at max level. What's to hate about that?

I really enjoyed AAs too, the problem is that they were too powerful and should have been introduced more gradually. They really trivialized pre-Luclin content, so you quickly had all these no name guilds in NToV (where most of the best loot was even during Luclin).

[radditsu]

Vulak Tunare, and doze tears items beat a ton of stuff until very last of VT, some cursed stuff,Some khati sha stuff..and seru stuff. Burrower belt is nice. +5mana regen shields are nice... but luclin was a weapon +stats factory.


Especially ulaks


All the ulaks....

[Bodybagger]

am I the only newb excited to have Warrens with Velious? lol one of my favorite newb zones TBH...

[odiecat99]

I remember Crystal Caverns and raiding Kael on my ikky monk.. not much else TBO.

stayed in the tunnel most of the time to try and get better gear.

[radditsu]

Warrens is the best newbie zone. So much stuff to murder.

[Rhambuk]

Warrens was always empty on my server, and with the tlc there werent even farmers in the zone.

[Hollywood]

This guy gets it. Velious is huge and unforgiving, it's the final frontier of Norrath before we went to the moon. The fights are harder, everything is bigger, and the rewards are greater. The progression makes perfect sense and deservedly is considered the crown jewel of EQ.

Many people would say this expansion created modern MMOs more so than any single title or expansion in any game since. Yeah we had some raids before, but this created tiered raiding, incorporated massive, rewarding quests (which they got right with epics in Kunark) on a more inclusive level (ring war was usually an open invite with people from all over the place helping out, not just the main guild - it was a community event), and created the true hardcore raiding environment where world firsts mattered.

On top of that, if you really get into it, there is tons of lore incorporated into the three main factions and the part you play in their dalliances. Quests for champions and quests for traitors, and not just collect a few things in turn in like we got in classic, but long, multi leveled quests that require trade skills, single camps, groups, and raids. They basically made epic quests available to everyone instead of just individual classes. Did you know there were quests in SS with incredible rewards that weren't solved until almost 5 years after the release of Velious? That zone alone carries so much lore and history it's mind boggling.

We haven't even gotten into Growth, ToV, or Sleeper's Tomb. To say this expansion is lacking in lore is to show a lack of experience with this expansion. I would suggest that you guys who weren't fans of it get into a decent guild (not saying you aren't) and start doing stuff. There is so much to do in Velious starting around level 30 that we'll be a happy server for a long time. Even if you aren't in the top guilds, you'll find great things to do and with the community on P99 10th rings shouldn't be too hard to get. Hell I won't be surprised if BDA or another class R gets the first 10th ring.

Awesome thoughts, plenty to remind us of what it offered and a nice refresher for those of us waiting with much anticipation.

I know a lot of players whom get on at most three times a week for a few hours at a time, and while EQ is not casual, they still enjoy doing little bits and pieces to things, whether it's quests, helping others, seeing old places once again etc.

They may never complete these objectives, the goals may be out of reach, and it may all end up for nothing, but it's still enjoyable.

Kunark offered the same, however I believe for non raiding content, there's much more of interest in Velious once you dig deep.

Warrens was always empty on my server, and with the tlc there werent even farmers in the zone.

Awesome place though, and really over due. I appreciate respecting the time line but introducing Warrens would have been better done years ago.

[radditsu]

Dont hate on stonebrunt either. Wakizashi dawg.

[EvaShogouki01]

I never did. I stopped playing not too far into Kunark (I was anti-social and soloing was just too brutal when you only had a couple hours a day to play). Very excited to see Velious.

[Aborath]

This guy gets it. Velious is huge and unforgiving, it's the final frontier of Norrath before we went to the moon. The fights are harder, everything is bigger, and the rewards are greater. The progression makes perfect sense and deservedly is considered the crown jewel of EQ.

Many people would say this expansion created modern MMOs more so than any single title or expansion in any game since. Yeah we had some raids before, but this created tiered raiding, incorporated massive, rewarding quests (which they got right with epics in Kunark) on a more inclusive level (ring war was usually an open invite with people from all over the place helping out, not just the main guild - it was a community event), and created the true hardcore raiding environment where world firsts mattered.

On top of that, if you really get into it, there is tons of lore incorporated into the three main factions and the part you play in their dalliances. Quests for champions and quests for traitors, and not just collect a few things in turn in like we got in classic, but long, multi leveled quests that require trade skills, single camps, groups, and raids. They basically made epic quests available to everyone instead of just individual classes. Did you know there were quests in SS with incredible rewards that weren't solved until almost 5 years after the release of Velious? That zone alone carries so much lore and history it's mind boggling.

We haven't even gotten into Growth, ToV, or Sleeper's Tomb. To say this expansion is lacking in lore is to show a lack of experience with this expansion. I would suggest that you guys who weren't fans of it get into a decent guild (not saying you aren't) and start doing stuff. There is so much to do in Velious starting around level 30 that we'll be a happy server for a long time. Even if you aren't in the top guilds, you'll find great things to do and with the community on P99 10th rings shouldn't be too hard to get. Hell I won't be surprised if BDA or another class R gets the first 10th ring.

Great post. Velious was an amazing experience, culminating in one of the most legendary video game happenings of all time: the waking and killing of the Sleeper. I can't wait to revisit it all.