When did Everquest start to really decline in quality of experience?

[Forsh]

I played from 2000-2007 and I loved it so much I literally wrapped my life around my play. Raid nights with my guild were as important on my schedule as waking up and going to work or eating.

I left EverCrack during the Gates of Discord expansion because my career required all of my extra time but I didn't want to leave, I still had that addiction to log in and grind and make raids and so forth. As of this past year I've had all of my free time available where I could dedicate 24 hours a day if I wanted to into an MMORPG. I downloaded the free EverQuest install and logged in....I couldn't even get through the introductory quest because everything was so terrible. The interface was terrible, the quest itself was terrible, the "missions" and options looked like a low budget version of what World of Warcraft has....I just couldn't....it was so terrible and not even close to what EverCrack was.

My first experience in original EQ was logging in and being scared out of mind when an Orc Pawn started to own me while I was killing bats. He snuck up right behind me and I could never get away from him, he never stopped chasing me....I freaked out....and hooked from that point on....the game was exciting....it was fun being forced to make my way in the world with other people.

No matter how much excitement and passion I had ths year to devote my life to playing again it was impossible for me, this new EverQuest made me sick to my stomach. When did this game get so bad?

[Prismaticshop]

After planes of power

[Swish]

PoP was the the peak, I don't think they'd ever have been able to keep up with it.

[silo32]

After you could meditate on a epic mount and ldon. Also when they merged my baby dillon zek with rallos tallon vallon into ZEK

It died n I left

[silo32]

Sullon stupid rnf auto spell check fkkkk

[Tunabros]

After planes of power

[Khikik]

For me it was after Planes of power, because nothing was on "theme" aka all the lore after that just seemed to be come out of nowhere "just because"

Luclin was sort of weird expansion, but it had some lore tie ins with the Iksar and Ssra

And then Planes of power really doubled down on the whole everquest pantheon. I feel they did a very good job making each planar zone bring back the magic of zones like Plane of fear / hate etc. Seems to me after PoP they pretty much just gave up on the lore and story of the world and just started introducing new characters "just because"

[Mesocyclone]

Instancing ruined EQ and the ugly post Velious graphics

[elwing]

Sorry, pop had fancy raid and such but it made just 0 sense, world stopped to make sense after luclin

[unleashedd]

after POP it started to feel like a job, so POP was peak for me

[Mblake81]

Ruins of Kunark

[Molitoth]

When Llandris Stepped down.

[Zipity]

After Velious hence this server.

[OuterChimp]

When Teal went away....

/sad

[Naethyn]

Lost dungeons of norrath. After this point loot became vendor bough with points. Dungeons became interconnected hallways. Going “down into” a dungeon died with ldon.

[Jibartik]

definitely when they changed the art.

[magnetaress]

Velious.

When gear started to 'progress'. Velious is a goood expansion, but it was the tip of the iceberg for 'progression' 'raiding'.

I was not as impressed by luclin dungeons.

They should have just had 40 varieties of solA, guk, and WK

[magnetaress]

also velious was the time when zones got kinda 'big'

so there was a lot of big empty and runs between dungeon and city were 17 mins instead of 10 mins

the small nature of EC, and gfay is nice

TD for kunark was a great zone but they could have compressed it as well

dreadlands is just the right size, but the port in area is a bit big

[magnetaress]

iceclad and WL ruined EQ

[magnetaress]

most of the time I spent in pop was hanging out at the entrance to PoD, PoNightmare, or the gnome plane? forget the name the scrapyplace. I didn't 'see' much of PoP.

The 4 or 5 times we cruised through bot in a pick up raid with our servers leet guild was funt ho.

[magnetaress]

GoD actually had some cool zones, and the OoW proving grounsd or w/e that maze like zone at the end were u did all those trials for the +saves was a cool well designed zone but it was all to insanely grindy at that point

[magnetaress]

GoD/OoW should have been their own game and start from lvl 1 on another mmo world.

[foxchris509]

PoP was a masterpiece, the progression and flagging in the expansion was very well thought out. You can really tell the devs went all in for it. All the npc models are great and the zones are just as badass as you would expect from a high end expansion. If you are a raider and haven't experienced it yet you are seriously missing out. Finish it all to make it into time and the amazing loot it just is perfect. The fast travel books obviously suck and ruined some parts of the game but overall if you are into raiding its the best. Things did start to get weird after pop with GoD but OoW was another masterpiece and probably my favorite eq expansion. New epics 1.5/2.0 that really are cool and tie in to the previous epic quests. Awesome raids and loot it really has it all.

[Kohedron]

I stopped playing like the day before Legacy of Ykesha came out

It was clear they were just churning shit out just to churn shit out, luckily 11 year old me figured out it was time to jump ship

[Izmael]

Luclin is where it went downhill for me.

Places like Shadowhaven, Nexus, Bazaar.. soulless, lifeless places that all look the same.

Mobs that nobody likes. What the fuck is a zelniak? Who the fuck cares? But everyone loves a gnoll or a froglok.

Zones that are all huge and square, a-la Halls of Testing. Fuck that shit. Give me the good old Qeynos and Befallen so I can get lost in there.

Items that made everything from previous expansions a bunch of junk.

AA's that made players without AA's a bunch of junk (or was that later on?).

Mindless keying for boring raid zones and soulcrushing timesinks aka "ring events".

Praise Rog/Bog for stopping at Velious and never going past it. We're all lucky here.

[Toomuch]

Personally I feel like it was a gradual progression that way, with Luclin and Planes of Power contributing to it a little bit here and there, with a steep drop-off after Planes of Power. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, what people seemed to fall in love with in Everquest is the realism and difficulty level. You had to talk to people, depend on other people/classes, take the time/effort to travel where you needed to go, plan ahead with a lot of things like food/water/bandages, not venture into dangerous areas if you're not prepared/leveled/geared enough, etc.

I also played on Sullon Zek, and when they introduced Luclin, they introduced hard-coded safe zones (Nexus and Bazaar). I hate to use the cliché term, but it definitely ruined a bit of the immersion. Sullon was so hardcore, so merciless and brutal, always watching your back and hitting a /who hotkey every 10 seconds, and then suddenly you could just be safe/invulnerable instead.

Freebie ports on a timer with the implementation of The Nexus, that took away a bit of the interpersonal communication and interdependency that was so much a core part of the game, and introduced the first real EZ travel mode. If the Nexus only went once every 3 or 4 real hours, or maybe even just once a game day at most, maybe that would have preserved the game a little better?

Being able to vendor your wares automatically in The Bazaar, again it took away a large facet of the interpersonal communication. The zone itself wasn't the worst, it was the vendor-mode that dumbed down the game. If it could have just been the new EC, where it just made more sense to buy and sell wares there, due to the proximity to the Nexus and banks and all that, maybe that would have felt better? Or maybe limiting vendor mode to "open market hours" (like 8 AM to 6 PM game time) or something?

And then PoP came, and doubled-down on ez mode travel with the books. They DEFINITELY needed more limits on that, like maybe waaaay less available books around, and maybe you can only click 1 non-PoP book every 3 hours or something?

I personally liked the raiding in PoP and Luclin. If they could have kept the gear scaling a little more under control, I think it would have made a huge difference too. Like, maybe the 125 HP/mana items in Luclin, scale those back to ~115 and such, and then apply something similar to the PoP gear, so that it's maxing out more around 130. Then also tweak the raid mobs damage/HP/etc as well, to even out the gear tweaks. If they could've done that, then the very best gear from Velious and Kunark would've still been very applicable and worthwhile, instead of almost completely trivialized the moment the next expansion came out.

Basically, it seems like they kind of bumped up the top-end gear stats at about a rate of 25% per expansion, but if they could have kept it closer to 12-15%, then at least most of the old high-end raids are still well worth doing for the gear. And to me, the general lore sticks better too, because the big-bad bosses from previous expansions, that have all this painstakingly well-written story built in, they don't become complete pushovers (while still being gods and such?) quite so quickly.

[Danth]

Declined a little bit with Kunark and Velious, but not badly. Luclin was the first serious decline in quality. Luclin's development was notoriously plagued by internal turmoil within Verant/Sony, and it showed. I still think a decent expansion might've been hidden in there under the garbage, but I have to assess it on what it is, not what it could've been.

Planes or Power is rightly popular among the folks who enjoy zerg raiding, but from my standpoint (I mostly like group content) it mortally wounded EQ. Game never truly recovered from PoP. That singular expansion, moreso than any other, effectively ruined the game for me. Then come Ykesha and Lost Dungeons, both of which were cheaply made insults, then the ultimate insult of Gates and "let's cut this expansion in half and sell it as two!" I quit for the last time in spring 2004 and haven't been back since.

Looking at the above, EQ looks like a tale of poor management. For all its success, given better management and planning it could have been even more than what it was.

Danth
Danth

[Danth]

(can't edit in RNF) Hah at myself, managed to double-sign. Think that's a first.

[Gustoo]

For a while it was great trying to murder people at the spires before the Luclin teleport timer ran out. There was still a lot of activity in Gfay during early Luclin as people didn't all get the expansion at the same time and there was some transition. I even made money buying things from Gfay and selling them in the Bazaar and similar such dumb stuff.

Like any PVP player the non PVP zones in Luclin totally destroyed the game and I quit for a long time. I came back and didn't buy any other expansions and kept playing for a while. I eventually got POP on my last bout of playing and enjoyed getting KEI and SLN on a low level character and going around with infinite mana and health casting low level spells on people. It was pretty fun and there were players here and there but thinking about the difference between what Gfay was and what it was during POP era brings actual tears to my eyes.

I played much longer than I should have, but LDON really put the nail in the coffin because it made it so all rallos zek PK twinks had augmented no drop gear so there was no point to PVP them anymore.

I did enjoy the noobie quests added in the LDON era or so and I enjoyed getting to play on the Discord permadeath server that was similar era.

At some point what they needed to do was a total game rebalancing that made the old world relevant again, and made old world items more than just vendor trash. I mean you could get a centi longsword for like 100pp and it was better than almost all droppable weapons through velious.

What was interesting is that the majority of the stuff added in Luclin and afterwards was no drop or non tradeable. What this meant is that while I was trading and low level PVPing well past Velious era I can hardly remember a single item beyond velious except the centi long sword, the tool that increases fletching success, and the super low delay thrown item from luclin also that I was like the only person to pharm and stockpile and use.

Of course you get a new expansion like Luclin and you try to enjoy it because, what choice do you have. I loved all the expansions and the excitement they brought, but they all just made more and more of the game irrelevant which meant I was no longer really playing everquest but instead a new game based around the content of the new expansion. That sucked.

Ultimately the game got worse with every expansion and should have had a more organic perpetual improvement program that kept the whole world progress aligned rather than obsoleting entire continents.

For me, Vanilla is the best but without modifying the game and adding custom content, velious is the right place to stop.

They should for sure disable waking the sleeper on servers that aren't going to reset though.

[Gustoo]

I just like when Monks had to be the worst race (humans) and got not weapons, and were still quite strong and awesome. They were truly minimalist, really special class.

In Kunark and beyond they get so many crazy ass items and weapons that they're just like any other class that its a real downgrade for the direction of the class.

[Nirgon]

Trannies

[Tunabros]

just logged on eq live and made a fresh character

my eyes

[Delekhan]

Luclin began the decline and PoP set the trend. Yes PoP was a wonderful raiding experience but it left the general community bifurcated and it never recovered.

[GnomeLuvr]

I played up to Prophecy of Ro, and quit shortly after the expansion came out.

What killed EverQuest for me, was the endless conveyor belt of expansions. The vast majority of people had not had time to enjoy a lot of what was offered in one expansion, before the next expansion rolled out.

The majority of people that played on my server (Fennin Ro) were not "hardcore, play all day/every day" people. We had jobs and lives outside the game, and it often felt that we were being punished for not making EQ our number one priority in our lives. I felt that I was constantly playing catch-up at the beginning of each expansion, so that I might have one character at max level before they raised the level cap again. Then it was trying to grind out the un-fun AA's that were required for most guilds, and even many groups.

Adding to the mounting burden of trying to keep up, the PoK books and the Bazaar pretty much killed any sense of community I felt from the game, and it just became another job.

[Tethler]

PoP was the the peak, I don't think they'd ever have been able to keep up with it.

Pretty much this

[Ravager]

After Velious they should have dialed back how many zones they added per expansion and just worked on revamping existing zones to keep the game fresh without making 95% of the game lifeless deserts. New dungeons tucked in the existing zones would have been fine, but should have left a single "core" game that still had to be traversed and used to keep things lively.

[Atmas]

Like many have said PoP was the peak.

Lore was great and still in step with the original ethos of the game. AAs which were one of the best points of Luclin got further expanded in scope and usefulness. Gear stats and bonuses felt significant and had bonuses that were great enhancements to class abilities. The progression system was extremely engaging. The zones were diverse and pretty well tuned with a few understandable exceptions. New interesting spells, some of them weren't very useful but still exciting.

GoD was a huge disappointment. The zones and enemies seemed so random in design. The zones in a lot of cases looked like lazy heavy use of Ctrl + V. The spells were very uninspired. I played a wizard and the new top nuke was literally just the damage of the previous one +10%. The enemies were ridiculously poorly tuned. I heard later on the level cap had intended to be raised to 70 but they scraped that but didn't properly adjust the mobs.

Part of the reason things declined was because PoP was so good honestly. It's hard to follow up something where you kill the gods in an epic story and make huge gear gains. After that everything will really feel just contrived and like you are just doing the next thing just to get the next percentage of increase. I played a bit of OoW which was much better than GoD but really the game was just no longer the same. I had enjoyed Luclin a lot because of AAs, mounts, and Vex Thal loot (not the zone itself) but I understood how people could dislike it because it was so removed from the original game. Post PoP was really just a very different feel.

[Bardp1999]

The decline started in Velious and continued through Luclin and PoP. All raid content and forgetting about the rest of the world. After Kunark the 'neck beard' aspect of the game really started to spiral out of control.

[imperiouskitten]

I stopped playing like the day before Legacy of Ykesha came out

It was clear they were just churning shit out just to churn shit out, luckily 11 year old me figured out it was time to jump ship

Smart! I stuck around until GoD, not that I ever played the content. I totally felt the magic drying out of it with those expansions too. Funny how reliable the child's gut is.

[Tunabros]

I think they just ran out of ideas

[Arvan]

PoP hit EQ down to 50% hp and it lost a lot of hp every expansion after

[Tethler]

I think they just ran out of ideas

It's also possible that dev budget shrank following the drop in subs with WoW launch.

[Tunabros]

think this video pretty much explains how Eq live fell apart

RwwgJixA98M

[greenspectre]

Alright, I'm going to throw the unpopular opinion into the ring here, but I'll start with a disclaimer- I was not an active raider until Secrets of Faydwer expansion. By then they had removed the key requirements for both PoP and OoW, and I experienced both of those expansions from the point of view of a 75-80 character who mostly solo'ed and duo'ed the camps of interest in those expansions, and went on maybe one Time Raid and a handful of Anguish raids.

I had the most fun in OoW. Yes, GoD was a dumpster fire, and the only time I spent there (was active through House of Thule) was for AC aug camps as necessary for my SK. But OoW was super fun. Epic 1.5/2.0 was a much-needed addition to the game after Velious rendered some epics obsolete, the Anguish armor was very impressive and the chests had unique clickies, and the other gear still felt unique.

Wall of Slaughter, the 65-70 exp zone of choice, was a zone that kicked you in the teeth when you came in unprepared. Even Dranik's Scar, the 55+ entry zone for the expansion, was very hard for the new players coming in. The series of trials in Muramite Proving Grounds that permanently increased your character's resistance caps was a unique addition, and the Pyrilens especially looked awesome.

Then there's Anguish. I can't deny the awesomeness that was Plane of Time (I ran through the script a few times in Imperium Server and agree it was about as epic as it comes), but Anguish just felt more fun to me. Especially because people would walk away from there with orbs for their 2.0's. The boss gimmicks were very fun, including having to collect the masks throughout the zone to beat OMM's gimmick at the end.

After OoW I literally don't remember the expansion order. Serpent's Spine was actually fun since it gave newbies new areas to play in, and Seeds of Destruction was ALSO extremely fun because of the time travel aspect- nothing beat going back to the Field of Bone before it was the Field of Bone and talking to Trakanon and Jaled'Dar as quest NPC's, or exploring Qeynos Hills as humans had only just landed there and called it Oceangreen Hills/Village. The deep dive into Kunark lore especially kept me interested.

PoP was cool, and it was awesome getting to meet and in some cases kill the Gods you picked at character select and only read about, but I have to say OoW just did it for me better, with Seeds of Destruction a close second. The experience declined for some expansions but was better in others, and I think we were just spoiled by the consistent quality of classic-kunark-velious and PoP.

[magnetaress]

Kunark added 1-50 content.

Ever expansion should have added 1-50 content.

the level cap should have never gone past 60

[Nirgon]

Okay changing my answer to Luclin models and trannies

[Gustoo]

Good perspective greenspectre I can see how the stuff they kept adding in the later expansions was a lot of fun for someone who kept their character at the top of the food chain. They made those expansions for you and it worked. All that stuff really does sound quite epic and new experiences rather than just nostalgia exploration seems like it would be great if I was the kinda player who kept at the top.

It’s almost like a battle manga where the main character gets so over the top awesome that all the old school stuff is indeed totally left behind. If the game kept attracting newbies maybe it would have had more focus on them, but they didn’t want to let you hardcore guys down.

[Molitoth]

I had the most fun in OoW. Yes, GoD was a dumpster fire, and the only time I spent there (was active through House of Thule) was for AC aug camps as necessary for my SK. But OoW was super fun. Epic 1.5/2.0 was a much-needed addition to the game after Velious rendered some epics obsolete, the Anguish armor was very impressive and the chests had unique clickies, and the other gear still felt unique.

Wall of Slaughter, the 65-70 exp zone of choice, was a zone that kicked you in the teeth when you came in unprepared. Even Dranik's Scar, the 55+ entry zone for the expansion, was very hard for the new players coming in. The series of trials in Muramite Proving Grounds that permanently increased your character's resistance caps was a unique addition, and the Pyrilens especially looked awesome.

Then there's Anguish. I can't deny the awesomeness that was Plane of Time (I ran through the script a few times in Imperium Server and agree it was about as epic as it comes), but Anguish just felt more fun to me. Especially because people would walk away from there with orbs for their 2.0's. The boss gimmicks were very fun, including having to collect the masks throughout the zone to beat OMM's gimmick at the end.
.

Agreed. I had some of the most fun in EQ during OOW. It was a fantastic expansion with some really fun raid design concepts.

Remember training up Alcohol Tolerance for the Hanvar fight?

[Mblake81]

I think they just ran out of ideas

At one point just being online with others and the ability to chat was enough. Later games came out of the box with more meat on the bone.

This.. is a dodge Viper. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ8rhpxVpqs) #5 off the assembly line. This car is special because its not special. There are no traction aids, stability control, air bags or even a roll bar in an open top vehicle. It came from the factory with a warning to be careful, because you can easily kill yourself. It's cheap, the original people interested in such a car (can't remove that from the time it came out and the circumstances surrounding it) didn't care about that stuff, they wanted to go fast for cheap. You don't even have windows or door handles.

[greenspectre]

Good perspective greenspectre I can see how the stuff they kept adding in the later expansions was a lot of fun for someone who kept their character at the top of the food chain. They made those expansions for you and it worked. All that stuff really does sound quite epic and new experiences rather than just nostalgia exploration seems like it would be great if I was the kinda player who kept at the top.

It’s almost like a battle manga where the main character gets so over the top awesome that all the old school stuff is indeed totally left behind. If the game kept attracting newbies maybe it would have had more focus on them, but they didn’t want to let you hardcore guys down.

I was HARDLY hardcore! When GoD and OoW launched I was like 15 levels below max. Quit for a while, too. Missed a few expansions and didn't actually push for max level until Secrets of Faydwer, when I finally hit 75 on my ranger, whom I abandoned shortly thereafter for my SK, who I took to 90 in HoT before I quit live for good. My guild always raided content that was one or two expansions back because we weren't good enough for the new stuff.

Most of my fun in later expansions was had exploring expansions I'd missed. Camping AC augs solo for my SK in Riftseeker's Sanctum, which was previously an endgame zone for OoW. But a little secret- the FUNNEST part of late-life EQ was soloing/duo'ing endgame bosses. I'd regularly solo Venril Sathir or Trakanon when they were up, and eventually could solo Vindi. Teamed up with my beastlord friend and we did a whole Sleeper's Tomb run including the Ancients for funsies, and even caught AoW when he was up once. THAT was fun EQ right there.

[Toxigen]

When I hit 60 on my first character.

[Mblake81]

Ere come the hot steppah.

[OuterChimp]

wohurdah uhhpp

[XeroKill]

Planes of Power is what killed it for me. I was a raid leader in a progression guild on Morell Thule, and the flagging process of POP damn near destroyed our guild. Ultimately they survived and still raid on live to this day, but there is no one left from the original guild that stuck together through Vox / Naggy Classic Planes, Sky, VP, NToV / AoW / ST, Emp / Seru / VT and all the way to PoTime Phase 3.

The PoP raid progression system was the absolute worst mistake EQ ever made. It was so frustrating because the way the planar progression worked you inevitably ended up with a large number of veteran raiders that were twiddling their thumbs while we waited for the more casual elements to catch up. A number of the veterans that were ready for Elemental Gods or PoTime would quit or jump ship because they were tired of waiting, forcing us to recruit, forcing us to backflag and re-gear new recruits, which lead to more veterans getting burnt out, which lead to... you see how this went? We did this for about a year, just back and forth between being on the verge of breaking PoTime Phase 4 and having to go back to killing Grummus and Terris Thule.

Although it is my personal favorite fight, ultimately I think it was Xegony that killed my gaming days in EQ. I spent more time and energy trying to bring that bitch down and every failure would frustrate our team that much more. The more people left, and new people had to fill the ranks, the harder she became. She was the pinnacle of raid content in my opinion. Her event was perfection in my eyes. Anyone that has fought her knows just how intense that raid can be, especially in the early days before CoTH bots at the rainbow and most of your raid in full elemental / time equipment. All the other gods were a joke compared to her.

Rathe Council was difficult, don't get me wrong, but it was difficult because it was either bugged or so highly over tuned (I forget which) that I think only 1 or 2 guilds managed to down them before the nerfs. Even after the nerfs, they were a significant hurdle... but if you could down Xegony cleanly, then the nerfed version of Rathe Council was actually quite easy by comparison. It was just tedious and most of what caused wipes were small mistakes piling up as the event slogged on. We only had two kinds of wipes on Rathe Council. We either fucked it up within the first 10 minutes with bad pulls or it was right at the end when the last 1 or 2 were being brought down. By that point you were spread so thin that even the smallest mistake could snowball out of control. However, with Xegony every moment was on the verge of disaster no matter how well things were going. Any one small thing could quickly end an otherwise perfect execution.

But yea, for me, it was Planes of Power and their progression system that cashed in my chips. I think POP is both the best expansion in terms of how raids were tuned to be mechanical and not just HP sponges like VT / Seru, and also the worst expansion thanks to flagging.

[Barik]

Planes of Power is what killed it for me. I was a raid leader in a progression guild on Morell Thule, and the flagging process of POP damn near destroyed our guild. Ultimately they survived and still raid on live to this day, but there is no one left from the original guild that stuck together through Vox / Naggy Classic Planes, Sky, VP, NToV / AoW / ST, Emp / Seru / VT and all the way to PoTime Phase 3.

The PoP raid progression system was the absolute worst mistake EQ ever made. It was so frustrating because the way the planar progression worked you inevitably ended up with a large number of veteran raiders that were twiddling their thumbs while we waited for the more casual elements to catch up. A number of the veterans that were ready for Elemental Gods or PoTime would quit or jump ship because they were tired of waiting, forcing us to recruit, forcing us to backflag and re-gear new recruits, which lead to more veterans getting burnt out, which lead to... you see how this went? We did this for about a year, just back and forth between being on the verge of breaking PoTime Phase 4 and having to go back to killing Grummus and Terris Thule.

Although it is my personal favorite fight, ultimately I think it was Xegony that killed my gaming days in EQ. I spent more time and energy trying to bring that bitch down and every failure would frustrate our team that much more. The more people left, and new people had to fill the ranks, the harder she became. She was the pinnacle of raid content in my opinion. Her event was perfection in my eyes. Anyone that has fought her knows just how intense that raid can be, especially in the early days before CoTH bots at the rainbow and most of your raid in full elemental / time equipment. All the other gods were a joke compared to her.

Rathe Council was difficult, don't get me wrong, but it was difficult because it was either bugged or so highly over tuned (I forget which) that I think only 1 or 2 guilds managed to down them before the nerfs. Even after the nerfs, they were a significant hurdle... but if you could down Xegony cleanly, then the nerfed version of Rathe Council was actually quite easy by comparison. It was just tedious and most of what caused wipes were small mistakes piling up as the event slogged on. We only had two kinds of wipes on Rathe Council. We either fucked it up within the first 10 minutes with bad pulls or it was right at the end when the last 1 or 2 were being brought down. By that point you were spread so thin that even the smallest mistake could snowball out of control. However, with Xegony every moment was on the verge of disaster no matter how well things were going. Any one small thing could quickly end an otherwise perfect execution.

But yea, for me, it was Planes of Power and their progression system that cashed in my chips. I think POP is both the best expansion in terms of how raids were tuned to be mechanical and not just HP sponges like VT / Seru, and also the worst expansion thanks to flagging.

I think this sums it up nicely, however for me and the particular guild I was in I was fortunate enough to have a large core of our guild to stick together and not waiver. I remember it like it was yesterday. But I def remember seeing this scenario ALOT.

[Cassawary]

When I hit 60 on my first character.

/wave :D

[Jimjam]

Planes of Power is what killed it for me. I was a raid leader in a progression guild on Morell Thule, and the flagging process of POP damn near destroyed our guild. Ultimately they survived and still raid on live to this day, but there is no one left from the original guild that stuck together through Vox / Naggy Classic Planes, Sky, VP, NToV / AoW / ST, Emp / Seru / VT and all the way to PoTime Phase 3.

The PoP raid progression system was the absolute worst mistake EQ ever made. It was so frustrating because the way the planar progression worked you inevitably ended up with a large number of veteran raiders that were twiddling their thumbs while we waited for the more casual elements to catch up. A number of the veterans that were ready for Elemental Gods or PoTime would quit or jump ship because they were tired of waiting, forcing us to recruit, forcing us to backflag and re-gear new recruits, which lead to more veterans getting burnt out, which lead to... you see how this went? We did this for about a year, just back and forth between being on the verge of breaking PoTime Phase 4 and having to go back to killing Grummus and Terris Thule.

Although it is my personal favorite fight, ultimately I think it was Xegony that killed my gaming days in EQ. I spent more time and energy trying to bring that bitch down and every failure would frustrate our team that much more. The more people left, and new people had to fill the ranks, the harder she became. She was the pinnacle of raid content in my opinion. Her event was perfection in my eyes. Anyone that has fought her knows just how intense that raid can be, especially in the early days before CoTH bots at the rainbow and most of your raid in full elemental / time equipment. All the other gods were a joke compared to her.

Rathe Council was difficult, don't get me wrong, but it was difficult because it was either bugged or so highly over tuned (I forget which) that I think only 1 or 2 guilds managed to down them before the nerfs. Even after the nerfs, they were a significant hurdle... but if you could down Xegony cleanly, then the nerfed version of Rathe Council was actually quite easy by comparison. It was just tedious and most of what caused wipes were small mistakes piling up as the event slogged on. We only had two kinds of wipes on Rathe Council. We either fucked it up within the first 10 minutes with bad pulls or it was right at the end when the last 1 or 2 were being brought down. By that point you were spread so thin that even the smallest mistake could snowball out of control. However, with Xegony every moment was on the verge of disaster no matter how well things were going. Any one small thing could quickly end an otherwise perfect execution.

But yea, for me, it was Planes of Power and their progression system that cashed in my chips. I think POP is both the best expansion in terms of how raids were tuned to be mechanical and not just HP sponges like VT / Seru, and also the worst expansion thanks to flagging.

Ironically this wouldn't be a problem on p1999, where the culture is to kill as many raid targets as much as possible. As well as constantly doing backflagging, p1999s would be still raiding plane of fear for spined dragonclaws.

[Tunabros]

When I hit 60 on my first character.

:o

[Beebelbrox]

Based on most of the responses seems like the community is pretty conflicted over which after velious era xpac started to ruin the game, but that's definitely the tending theme it started to grow mold "somewhere around there".

Primal was probably the devs first big booboo in item power scaling during velious, but my god was it awesome to have! It was just TOO good.

For me the game lore and ultimate play experience was at the pinnacle during Luclin.

It all made sense to me, leaving velious for the evil that was banished to the moon, all the mentions of shissar' in world items previously through Kunark, the deep ties to the Iksar race, the greenmist item coming into game.. all that really breadcrumbed the story experience for me and got me excited to face the Shissar in Luclin. I really really enjoyed that part.

Being in a server first raiding guild on Erollisi Marr, the best part of luclin was racing FOH, Afterlife, Triton, Legacy of Steel and several others I can't remember for Luclins hidden raids. Literally being one of the first few dozen people to obtain a Ssra, Seru and Vex-Thal keys were some of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life.

Spending so much social time in and out of the game with guildies on IRC trying to puzzle solve quest text and hunt for items across the world was something I found so unique to everquest, the mystery and then sharing it with the community once you discovered something.

But no matter how much I loved the luclin story themes and those very unique end game guild only experiences of getting first keys or kill attempts -- Luclin was the worst expansion and the largest step in the wrong direction. 95% of other players were given community destroying gameplay loops such as:

** Bazaar killing the player-run economy, haggling a thing of the past.
** Nexus killing the real interactions needed for portals, and just made everyone goto luclin. Bye bye old world.
** The horses destroyed slow travel and again community interaction for buffs,
** The horses also destroyed casters wanting to indoor dungeon kill because you could meditate on the horse in combat outdoors,
** The AA's while giving us so much to progress in, gated people out of simple things like groups or guilds more so that gear checks ever could. You had a max level that could make raids and levels, but not neckbeard 200AAs, now you have this endless AA point hampster wheel were good players and dedicated guildies up to that point got left behind.
** AA's also killed the alt experience, less people leveling new classes after hitting max level
** Bane weapons for raids bosses, if the RNG wasn't bad enough already.
** Really boring raid encounters, Vex-Thal was a put you to sleep raid crawl.


All of those things set the wheels in motion for me to feel like the game had changed. I pushed on from Luclin into POP with all my vex-thal shinies and by exactly plane of war or whatever fight in planes of power, I was done.

I would be really disappointed if P99 ever went to luclin without taking out all of those things and class changes. That would be the only way I would want to go back and do it again.

[Gustoo]

Yes despite all the awesome fun of progressing further, we can all agree that the overall game balance and experience tanked with luclin which is why we don't go there.

We can still all agree that there is a ton of content we would lvoe to see added to the game.

[Jimjam]

Luclin ports made the game way more social. They forced you to sit with strangers for 15 mins with nothing to do but chat. Was way more social than instant player ports.

[zaldaben]

Luclin ports made the game way more social. They forced you to sit with strangers for 15 mins with nothing to do but chat. Was way more social than instant player ports.

boats did the same thing but for much longer lol. main thing it did was for anyone who mained a druid or wizard and used that income to get pissed off and quit. also there was more than once where I was just running NEAR the wizard spires and got randomly ported to the nexus.

me personally I loved raiding anguish. Potime was great as well. not really sure when EQ started to die. I think it was probably with the introduction of aa's where a character with no gear of equal level could progress to a point where someone who spents months raiding for gear was irrelevant. that and each new expansion with kunark included where solo/group equipment rendered top tier raid gear obsolete almost.

[HalflingSpergand]

From release to level 20ish was legit

[Naethyn]

Luclin is classic everquest - everyone played it.

[boukk]

PoP was the best, everything went downhill after that.

First ultimate mess being Gates of Discord.

[Nexii]

Sometimes around Sirken's downfall

[Nocht]

PoP was the best, everything went downhill after that.

First ultimate mess being Gates of Discord.

GoD was a big mess. I remember when a named mob spawned on me and bud (65 shaman and 65 sk) and vaporized my tank friend instantly. XD looked at the combat log and he got crit for like twice his health.

Yeah we were way outmatched but it was hillarious.

[shuklak]

Yes despite all the awesome fun of progressing further, we can all agree that the overall game balance and experience tanked with luclin which is why we don't go there.

We can still all agree that there is a ton of content we would lvoe to see added to the game.

They just need to make torches in ec tunnel port you to different luclin raids. Like t2 just sends you up to emp room.

Good luck.

[Jibartik]

I was thinking, I figured it out.

When they made an expansion.

Now hear me out!

This game is great, we just played through 10 years of kunark, without a broken economy. It proved to me it's one of the most well designed games in history.

So here's when EQ started to go down hill, when they released an expansion, 1 year after launch, setting up the precident, that they would continue to release expansions, every 1 year thereafter.

That is what killed everquest, the fast grind of expansion after expansion, to keep new players coming in, and ignoring the things that old players loved: The content they were already playing.

[putrid_plum]

up to Luclin imo, the PoK books and ease of travel killed it for me

[Mblake81]

I was thinking, I figured it out.

When they made an expansion.

Now hear me out!

This game is great, we just played through 10 years of kunark, without a broken economy. It proved to me it's one of the most well designed games in history.

So here's when EQ started to go down hill, when they released an expansion, 1 year after launch, setting up the precident, that they would continue to release expansions, every 1 year thereafter.

That is what killed everquest, the fast grind of expansion after expansion, to keep new players coming in, and ignoring the things that old players loved: The content they were already playing.

It's why there is a drastic difference in look between original world monsters like Hill Giants and the Velious giants. Pumping out expansion every year.

I would like to do a cohesive visual overhaul using the same art style but with a custom engine, specific to a game like this (with mobs agro through walls etc.). No way would i use Unreal.

EQ deserves its own engine.

[bradsamma]

OoW was the last good expansion.

[Malik_Gynax]

For me it was when dungeons changed from this:
https://i.imgur.com/bk5BOSi.png

To this:

https://i.imgur.com/iNpiBSn.png

Everquest was a WORLD. Going into a dungeon was terrifying. You could get lost anywhere. It never cared if you were receiving a "fair challenge." You were entering a dangerous dungeon!

If you died, you may never find your body again. At some point it stopped being a world and turned into a playground where you go from room to room boss to boss.

One of the coolest things about the early dungeons was 3D level design. It took a lot of skill to craft such cool places. Later expansions just went fully 2D and boring. It's a shame.

[Tunabros]

For me it was when dungeons changed from this:
https://i.imgur.com/bk5BOSi.png

To this:

https://i.imgur.com/iNpiBSn.png

Everquest was a WORLD. Going into a dungeon was terrifying. You could get lost anywhere. It never cared if you were receiving a "fair challenge." You were entering a dangerous dungeon!

If you died, you may never find your body again. At some point it stopped being a world and turned into a playground where you go from room to room boss to boss.

One of the coolest things about the early dungeons was 3D level design. It took a lot of skill to craft such cool places. Later expansions just went fully 2D and boring. It's a shame.

this man spitting facts

[imperiouskitten]

this man spitting facts

tru stuff. i still can't navigate guk live side. STILL scary

[SantagarBrax]

I believe portions of Luclin began the nosedive, hence the exit of Brad and over 50 other personnel a week before it launched. On Xegony, we didn't care for the port stones and bazaar, and most players decided to stick with the old character models over the Luclin "upgrade".

However, the "Real Decline" started when they began releasing expansions closer and closer together with minimal content and not allowing the player base time to fully explore and immerse themselves within the expansions. The writing was on the wall, so to speak. The first being Legacy of Ykesha, then except for the Augments, LDoN was a terrible expansion. The Lore was sacrificed as well after PoP and GoD was so damn bugged for so long no one was able to appreciate it or thought of it in a positive light until OoW era after they fixed GoD, but by then it was too late.

OoW was the last expansion I played through and thought it was a good one. I quit playing shortly before the Prophecies of Ro as it was clear that SoE was following in the path of old school Atari: Quantity over Quality. This was a recipe for disaster in that players found little to no worthy content being released, repetition for the sake of it, instancing and further disengagement throughout the EQ worlds, and a lack of appreciation from the company towards their player base, let alone understanding the magic which made the game great from the get go.

Everything became dumbed down, dull, and repetitive.

EQ2 was something new and fun until it began dumbing down the game to follow the WoW model and they suffered mightily from it.

[Mistle]

What are live mobs up to in hp? Past a billion yet? How much does a typical rogue backstab for?

[bomaroast]

Omens of War (OoW) was the last good expansion. Epics 2.0 and a raid-progression that wasn't completely fudged the way Planes of Power was. It was like a victory lap. Things went downhill quickly afterwards. What comes to my mind is the expansion with all the dragons shortly after OoW. That's what killed it for me.

[Mblake81]

For me it was when dungeons changed from this:
https://i.imgur.com/bk5BOSi.png

To this:

https://i.imgur.com/iNpiBSn.png

Everquest was a WORLD. Going into a dungeon was terrifying. You could get lost anywhere. It never cared if you were receiving a "fair challenge." You were entering a dangerous dungeon!

If you died, you may never find your body again. At some point it stopped being a world and turned into a playground where you go from room to room boss to boss.

One of the coolest things about the early dungeons was 3D level design. It took a lot of skill to craft such cool places. Later expansions just went fully 2D and boring. It's a shame.

+REP

[Jibartik]

It's why there is a drastic difference in look between original world monsters like Hill Giants and the Velious giants. Pumping out expansion every year.

I would like to do a cohesive visual overhaul using the same art style but with a custom engine, specific to a game like this (with mobs agro through walls etc.). No way would i use Unreal.

EQ deserves its own engine.

Someone is making one in unity, but I wonder about the authenticity of those quirks I agree.

[jolanar]

For me it was when dungeons changed from this:


To this:


Everquest was a WORLD. Going into a dungeon was terrifying. You could get lost anywhere. It never cared if you were receiving a "fair challenge." You were entering a dangerous dungeon!

If you died, you may never find your body again. At some point it stopped being a world and turned into a playground where you go from room to room boss to boss.

One of the coolest things about the early dungeons was 3D level design. It took a lot of skill to craft such cool places. Later expansions just went fully 2D and boring. It's a shame.

I wonder how much of that had to do with in game maps being released. The maps were notoriously bad for zones with any verticality.

[Ennewi]

Luclin models really were a departure, being too exaggerated for the old world in a breast implant sort of way. Even looking back at alpha/beta screenshots and footage, however clunky those models were, a rough impression of the same artistic style still remains present, like the very first Simpsons episodes.

[foxchris509]

For me it was when dungeons changed from this:
https://i.imgur.com/bk5BOSi.png

To this:

https://i.imgur.com/iNpiBSn.png

Everquest was a WORLD. Going into a dungeon was terrifying. You could get lost anywhere. It never cared if you were receiving a "fair challenge." You were entering a dangerous dungeon!

If you died, you may never find your body again. At some point it stopped being a world and turned into a playground where you go from room to room boss to boss.

One of the coolest things about the early dungeons was 3D level design. It took a lot of skill to craft such cool places. Later expansions just went fully 2D and boring. It's a shame.

To be fair tho Tacvi is a raidzone not really a dungeon like lower guk.

[Mblake81]

An observation I have read many times in DOOM communities. Something happened to level design when graphics engines got more powerful. You would think the opposite would have happened, like today we should be discussing some of the most complex, useable and overall beautiful works in level design.

You know what's cool, a dungeon like Permafrost where you have to click levers and such to open gates. That swing blade trap in SolA. Heads on pikes at the entrance to Befallen and a well that takes you straight to the bottom if you are dumb enough to fall in.

Something was also lost when games became focused on maps and specifically quest markers. You can toggle that stuff off but the game world is not setup for it. Everquest is a sweet spot in design and player involvement (with other players sharing knowledge).

[Ennewi]

The penetrable rock crevice leading into the Hole; whether intentional or not, it was a nice perk for small races and those able to shrink themselves. The shortcut dropdowns and zoneout pads in the Hole. The bookcase door leading to the basement of Unrest. The icy terrors in Permafrost, how with bad positioning and one knockback, players will get flung into the bear pits. NPCs that knockback/grav flux in Plane of Sky. An epic fight that requires group members submerge themselves in lava. Dragons spawning at or in the vicinity of Druid rings, which are still preferable to the Skyfire Wizard ring. All nice touches. It's easy to see the devs' minds at work and imagine them laughing as they built these zones that would later grief/reward players for being too curious or too careless. AE dispels were the cruelest though. Unforgivable.

[Mblake81]

The penetrable rock crevice leading into the Hole; whether intentional or not, it was a nice perk for small races and those able to shrink themselves. The shortcut dropdowns and zoneout pads in the Hole. The bookcase door leading to the basement of Unrest. The icy terrors in Permafrost, how with bad positioning and one knockback, players will get flung into the bear pits. NPCs that knockback/grav flux in Plane of Sky. An epic fight that requires group members submerge themselves in lava. Dragons spawning at or in the vicinity of Druid rings, which are still preferable to the Skyfire Wizard ring. All nice touches. It's easy to see the devs' minds at work and imagine them laughing as they built these zones that would later grief/reward players for being too curious or too careless. AE dispels were the cruelest though. Unforgivable.

This post makes me smile.

Welp, who's ready for some spit polished Unreal Engine mobile games? Raid: Shadow Legends. Millions of players.

[Bonethunder]

Everyone agrees gates, but they got it back at omens and kept it till seeds

then it was gone for good

[OuterChimp]

The penetrable .... crevice leading into the Hole....

[DMN]

Well, I quit not too long after velious so you know my answer. You could tell they were walking down the Monty Hall path.

[Toxigen]

Ere come the hot steppah.

That was probably the most fun raid ever for me.

[Gustoo]

Luclin is classic everquest - everyone played it.

A lot of people played luclin. Its true. We played because we loved everquest but everyone I played with was mostly regretful of the changes to the game. We liked new content, and all the new stuff but we would sacrifice all the good it added in order to repair the bad.

You guys may notice that EQ basically ended when WOW came out. Maybe OOW was a last push to get people involved again at highest level and stick with the game and you can see that it worked for some of the active raiders here. I looked at WOW for five seconds and hated it immediately and after investigating about the PVP situation learning it was for softy babies with instances and no item loot I was not interested at all.

Omens of War a expansion I never played at all (LDON really did me in) I did get Gates of Discord for some reason like it allowed me to get an item or some shit I wanted but I didn't experience any of its content at all.

POP was weird because the POK was really the main hub of the game after that, Bazaar was no longer a hub for anyone except people shopping for items that were permanently available in merchant mode, so it split up the community further which was a really funny thing. Active players cruising no longer passed through the typical house of commerce anymore.

The classic player made economy was really a great feature of everquest, with no attempts to regulate. I do think that the slot machine style casino's added later to eliminate currency from the game were a really great way to combat inflation.

I'm 100% confident that I could have a ball of a time playing the next TLP LIVE server and blasting through the game, but I think I would be happier doing the same for Everquest 2 since I don't have any expectations of what EQ2 should be, versus EQ1 I'd be disappointed all the time.

[Gustoo]

Also 2004 is right around when EQ2 came out so they totally switched real resources into that game I imagine to try to make the platform pay for itself.

[Gustoo]

Just going for a triple post. I remember EQ2 added PVP eventually, I wonder what it was like. Looks like last eq2 pvp died in 2016 RIP I wonder where the "Eq2 pvp was best game experience I ever had" guys are

[foxchris509]

I think brad actually came back and helped develop OOW some from what I remember. It probably is the last good expac.

[Swish]

Item loot in WoW pvp would have been epic but can you imagine the Blizzkids opening tickets every time they died? :D

[Phaezed-Reality]

i feel like the end of classic was POP. atleast thats when i quit. i tried it a bit after but it was extremely foreign at that point only 2 expansions deeper.

[Bonethunder]

People didnt like the difficulty of pop so they came out with LDON for the casuals, then they released GOD the hardest expansion for any game ever, and even the best guilds got shit on and no one saw tunat till 70 cap

even mpg trials were ridiculous

[greenspectre]

For those who are curious about anything post-OoW that was any fun, I will list below.

Depths of Darkhollow- Monster missions. You can literally play as Lord Nagafen trying to burn down waves of raiders. Or as a "group" trying to kill all of the nameds in SolB, Lguk, etc. This was fun because you could suddenly jump into the skin of a class you never played.

Serpent's Spine- Drakkin as a race, Crescent Reach as a newbie zone, interesting quests and leveling path from 0-60.

Seeds of Destruction- TIME TRAVEL, mostly seeing Kunark and the Field of (Bone)Scale and talking to Trakanon, Gorenaire, Jaled'Dar, accepting quests from them, etc. Also seeing Kaesora pre-destruction. Unfortunately this expansion also introduced Mercenaries, which were a boon to soloers but really permanently locked the game into 2-box mode. One boxer could now essentially have 4 people just by themselves.

[Terrok]

When they launched WOW, and saw that 99% of people wanted easy, handheld quests. they had to really dumb down eq to compete, even though, most of those people who play wow, also play 30 other games, because they get bored with easily concord stuff. Ironic right. It like people complained about paying $15 a month to play, and i have seen people pay a years salary for phone apps just do swing a bigger, stick. and then quit playing in 6 months.

[Swish]

When they launched WOW, and saw that 99% of people wanted easy, handheld quests. they had to really dumb down eq to compete, even though, most of those people who play wow, also play 30 other games, because they get bored with easily concord stuff. Ironic right. It like people complained about paying $15 a month to play, and i have seen people pay a years salary for phone apps just do swing a bigger, stick. and then quit playing in 6 months.

Maybe Daybreak will do EQ3 for mobile only.

[Izmael]

Did I mention the absurd removal of all legacy items? Not that they disappeared, they were just stripped of their mystical, and mythical legacy status. You can now purchase them for plat from a merchant.

That's right, walk up to a merchant and buy a manastone or a CoS.
I understand that you can also win them in the casino plat sink.

Either way, legacy items are a big part of what made EQ good, and P99 Green is there to remind us of that every day. If not for the legacy items, I'm not even sure Green would have triple-digit pop.

[Jimjam]

Legacy items were legacy items as they were mistakes. Fresh eq is better without them, just my opinion.

[greenspectre]

Did I mention the absurd removal of all legacy items? Not that they disappeared, they were just stripped of their mystical, and mythical legacy status. You can now purchase them for plat from a merchant.

That's right, walk up to a merchant and buy a manastone or a CoS.
I understand that you can also win them in the casino plat sink.

Either way, legacy items are a big part of what made EQ good, and P99 Green is there to remind us of that every day. If not for the legacy items, I'm not even sure Green would have triple-digit pop.

They also just plain aren't special anymore on live. Darkelf mask? There are plenty of in-game illusions you can get for free or by playing the in-game card game. Fungi Stick? Your worn regen not only will beat it, but you'll get clickies that out-regen it, and with OOC regen who cares anyways. Manastone is SUPREMELY less useful with OOC regen and classic content being trivial anyways. CoS instant-click invis literally became an AA ability. And obviously the nerfed weapons are no longer unique.

[jolanar]

TLDR:

EQ declined when I personally quit. Everything before I quit was perfection and everything after was irredeemable garbage.

[Ennewi]

TLDR:

EQ declined when I personally quit. Everything before I quit was perfection and everything after was irredeemable garbage.

Quit right before Velious launched, never set foot in any of its zones until they were released on blue. SoL was the only other expansion I played, albeit briefly, and even then only while leveling in old world zones which were more or less abandoned. Digging through some of the later content online, certain aspects seem in-line with the original vision but there's a lot of fat and gristle to cut away for any of that to be palatable imo.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=10342
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=10385

[Ennewi]

Neither of the two would look entirely out of place in old world zones and their loot tables don't appear to contain any overpowered or game-breaking items, excluding focuses and mods. But going through the various expansions and attempting to separate the wheat from the chaff would be a lengthy undertaking, just to highlight what coulda shoulda been.

[Mblake81]

Legacy items were legacy items as they were mistakes. Fresh eq is better without them, just my opinion.

Another example of mistakes that people find interesting.

[Mblake81]

TLDR:

EQ declined when I personally quit. Everything before I quit was perfection and everything after was irredeemable garbage.

Moon Cat says "Did you quit because EQ became irredeemable garbage?"

[branamil]

Classic was the peak, everything after ruined it more

[OuterChimp]

TLDR:

EQ declined when I personally quit. Everything before I quit was perfection and everything after was irredeemable garbage.

Always remember, the Old Corps ended the day before you came in. Just the way it is.

[Hrothgar]

I'm biased, but I think EQ declined once I decided to tackle more adult responsibilities. While I love the p99 server, I find that the 'enjoyability' of it died off the second I entered DKP-only loot, as the RL-Norrath balance became unhealthy.

That being said, Live is super fun right now and gives me the best of both worlds!

[Knuckle]

I think Shadows of Luclin - Planes of power - Legacy of Ykesha would be my 3 step tier to downhill.

SoL killed a lot of the traditional fantasy element, take that as you will, space cats and nexus/bazaar all kill community aspects of EQ, one of its primary strengths. Additionaly, raid keying got a lot more brutal, stepping up the difficulty to participate in endgame contnet.

Planes of Power took ease of access from shadows of luclin and cranked the knob up, instead of just having timed nexus teleports at spires, now you had a stone you could click in every city, and click it to get to any city.....

I did play and enjoyed planes of power, but never touched the endgame, i think your cheeto powder layers had to be pretty thick on the beard for plane of time/rathe council.

Legacy of Ykesha... Ehhh..I know Planes of Power had introduced recommended levels, or maybe that was shadows of luclin, I always hated the killing of the twink player, half the fun of everquest was decking out a newbie character, and it kept old players in low level content.

Anyway I did a few zones in LoY and never re-subbed after that, it felt like a game that no longer gave a shit, lol.

[Mblake81]

Because there was no player trading area. Players got together at different spots on different servers. My point is, the point was players getting together.

Not bots.

[Daloon]

I quit in Planes of Power due to school obligations, not because of my lack of interest. I think a lot of people realized that after a few years of EQ, they needed to focus on real life.

[Boptop]

I quit in Planes of Power due to school obligations, not because of my lack of interest. I think a lot of people realized that after a few years of EQ, they needed to focus on real life.

[OuterChimp]

Gates of Discord was when I stopped, right at the start. I think I remember going with guild one time into some zone, where even the trash mobs were basically wrecking our Planes geared folks and was like f this. I'm done.

Then popped back to the EQ I love after a 15 year hiatus.

[RecondoJoe]

A lot of people act like EverQuest just died because it got bad while completely ignoring the fact that me, and just about every single person I know quit the game when EQ 2 came out, and eventually moved to WoW because it was better. I don't know too many people who were like man, I really hate Legacy of Ykesha and Lost Dungeons of Norrath, I'm going to quit playing this game.

But I know a lot of people who I still talk to this day who quit for EQ 2. It's so surreal that no one mentions this, even in documentaries. Sony killed their own game, and it's generally prophesized that the only way WoW will die is when Blizzard kills it (which they are actually starting to do).

[Knuckle]

A lot of people act like EverQuest just died because it got bad while completely ignoring the fact that me, and just about every single person I know quit the game when EQ 2 came out, and eventually moved to WoW because it was better. I don't know too many people who were like man, I really hate Legacy of Ykesha and Lost Dungeons of Norrath, I'm going to quit playing this game.

But I know a lot of people who I still talk to this day who quit for EQ 2. It's so surreal that no one mentions this, even in documentaries. Sony killed their own game, and it's generally prophesized that the only way WoW will die is when Blizzard kills it (which they are actually starting to do).

I find that very interesting, I didn't even touch EQ 2 because at that point EQ 1 had evolved into such a joke, EQ 2 appeared to be a progression of that at a glance, as someone who quit during free trial a few years after it was out. Never met/knew someone who I played with on EQ that played EQ2. Definitely played WoW starting in TBC era after college.

[Tsunami21k]

PoP would have been perfect if it didn’t have PoK or the Bazaar. Those were the first steps to depersonalizing the game. I thought that Ssra and VT were really fun zones. I’ll echo what others have said and say that PoP brought some of the magic back. One thing I would kill to have on P99 is AA points. It really opened up a lot of doors for classes that weren’t so well balanced pre luclin. On the flip side of that it also closed a lot of doors for people that casuals who couldn’t grind enough AA to get their foot in the door of certain guilds. All things being equal i stopped playing mid PoP, tried to come back in GoD but it didn’t seem fun anymore.

[RecondoJoe]

I find that very interesting, I didn't even touch EQ 2 because at that point EQ 1 had evolved into such a joke, EQ 2 appeared to be a progression of that at a glance, as someone who quit during free trial a few years after it was out. Never met/knew someone who I played with on EQ that played EQ2. Definitely played WoW starting in TBC era after college.

A lot of people on my server, and real-life friends quit to play EQ 2 together. But also a lot of people kind of became adults while playing and seemed to have moved away from online gaming altogether. I don't know too many of my high school friends who still play games 20 years later, and even though there are a lot of 30-40 year olds I meet on WoW, meeting anyone who actually played EverQuest seems to be extraordinarily rare.

It feels surreal when you have self-proclaimed experts at MMO like Asmongold talk about how inferior EverQuest was despite having never played it. The first thing I realized when I played WoW classic last summer was how many WoW players would have loved EverQuest, but are completely oblivious. Like all of these kids want a more traditional, old school MMO, but few of them have actually experienced it or know how amazing it can be. When I play EQ and I hop into a dungeon or any zone, I'm completely drawn in and feel like I'm in that environment, and could die or be greatly rewarded at any time. I never get that same feeling from WoW or any other MMO I've played. Just a bunch of instanced grind for loot rewards that don't feel rewarding because they're flat-lined and handed out to everyone, and none of them are unique or interesting.

[ScottBerta]

After Kunark.

[Arteker]

I think Shadows of Luclin - Planes of power - Legacy of Ykesha would be my 3 step tier to downhill.

SoL killed a lot of the traditional fantasy element, take that as you will, space cats and nexus/bazaar all kill community aspects of EQ, one of its primary strengths. Additionaly, raid keying got a lot more brutal, stepping up the difficulty to participate in endgame contnet.

Planes of Power took ease of access from shadows of luclin and cranked the knob up, instead of just having timed nexus teleports at spires, now you had a stone you could click in every city, and click it to get to any city.....

I did play and enjoyed planes of power, but never touched the endgame, i think your cheeto powder layers had to be pretty thick on the beard for plane of time/rathe council.

Legacy of Ykesha... Ehhh..I know Planes of Power had introduced recommended levels, or maybe that was shadows of luclin, I always hated the killing of the twink player, half the fun of everquest was decking out a newbie character, and it kept old players in low level content.

Anyway I did a few zones in LoY and never re-subbed after that, it felt like a game that no longer gave a shit, lol.

lvls on gear happened right after the revamp of CT temple wich was luclin.
I enjoyed the drama over the road to quarm kill though.
i think pop was the first xpack wich was tuned alot because like 90% of average player had no the skill gear, or just brain to finish the original plane of justice Trials

[Arteker]

PoP would have been perfect if it didn’t have PoK or the Bazaar. Those were the first steps to depersonalizing the game. I thought that Ssra and VT were really fun zones. I’ll echo what others have said and say that PoP brought some of the magic back. One thing I would kill to have on P99 is AA points. It really opened up a lot of doors for classes that weren’t so well balanced pre luclin. On the flip side of that it also closed a lot of doors for people that casuals who couldn’t grind enough AA to get their foot in the door of certain guilds. All things being equal i stopped playing mid PoP, tried to come back in GoD but it didn’t seem fun anymore.

VT fun? it was probably the worst raid ever designed , i could go take a pop with a newspaper and come back and blobs would be still alive

[Arteker]

Item loot in WoW pvp would have been epic but can you imagine the Blizzkids opening tickets every time they died? :D

it was possible on the closed beta.

[Tunabros]

game literally died when legacy of ykesha came out

[imperiouskitten]

were u even born then

[salimoneus]

the Nexus and the Bazaar killed EQ

[Foxplay]

game literally died when legacy of ykesha came out

You know an expansion is shit when it's released and nobody goes there except maybe to get the lizard mount drums.... I remember exploring LoY on my monk right after it released. Nobody went there at all

[Swish]

You know an expansion is shit when it's released and nobody goes there except maybe to get the lizard mount drums.... I remember exploring LoY on my monk right after it released. Nobody went there at all

LoY wasn't a full on expansion.

[Ravager]

I logged on LoY launch. I got some black dye to make my Wood Elf Druid look like a ninja. And then that was the last time I played a Live Server.

[Zyth]

You know an expansion is shit when it's released and nobody goes there except maybe to get the lizard mount drums.... I remember exploring LoY on my monk right after it released. Nobody went there at all

holy shit frog w/ a sword though bro sony take my money