A strange but applicable query

[gruumsh]

I used to play EQ live back in the day, but I started around fall of '03 so I guess I never really got to experience true classic EQ and kunark and velious when they were first released.

I was just looking for maybe someone who played classic EQ tell me basically what is so awesome about kunark/velious. Just wanted to get an idea of what people liked about them that made them so epic.

Forgive the randomness of the question, and sorry if it's a bit confusing lol.

[President]

Kunark was crazy to me, I was still kinda lower level so exploring it all was ridiculous. Have lots of memories at the giant fort, lots of not so good memories in Dalnir... Karnor's reminded me a lot of Unrest, which I've always had a great love/hate relationship with. City of Mist just made me go wow, though I was mostly scared to enter it. Sebilis is arguably one of the best dungeons ever made...

Velious... the three faction thing was pretty cool, loved Plane of Growth.. not much more to go into there I didn't get to do much high end stuff..

Both added a lot more upper tier content and world spawns that added a lot of fun/competitiveness.

[Omnimorph]

Velious was the first expansion that really brought out some high tier raiding, with all the competing with other guilds, getting keys for members so you could do different content. Different encounters which required some pretty decent tactics. Velious also had the armour quests.

Kunark had epic quests, as well as some very signature zones :)

[gruumsh]

Lol this actually leads me to a offshoot to my original question. What is so awesome about sebilis? I also hear so many people freak out and say how great it is all the time.

Just a random thought.

[President]

Lol this actually leads me to a offshoot to my original question. What is so awesome about sebilis? I also hear so many people freak out and say how great it is all the time.

Just a random thought.

A gigantic zone where a group of low 50's could fight at the entrance, and a raid force of 60's could fight Trakanon at the end. Zone spiraled off in all different directions with different difficulties, loot, etc. Shit I'm pretty sure something like 7-8+ groups could fight comfortably in there without stepping on each others toes, and if you were lucky enough to be a cleric/enc/wizard in an AE group... well you really had some fun...

[Uaellaen]

what is so awesome about kunark/velious.

thats answered with a few words ... its a challange ;) its hard to get everything you want ... good risk vs. reward ratio imho ...

[Taluvill]

The design of the game was almost flawless imo, although thats basically an opinion.

The game was hard, unrewarding at times, and rewarding at others. Epic quests were VERY relevant throughout velious (whereas by '03, Epics were basically trash to top tier raid loot). The encounters were memorable and basically made you yearn for more.

Classic gets boring fast when you've done it all before, but Kunark just has so much straight content to do that its unreal. Collecting for epics for you and your alts, and 300+ quests to do, zones to explore, and bosses to take down just make everything so fun.

And VP will take for phone number and call you the next day telling you that you forgot your corpse and your not getting it back.

[km2783]

Ruins of Kunark is still my favorite expansion of any MMO I've yet played. The content was great, it gave a new race with a nice history, great zones, etc.

[Landis]

To start, I played an enchanter because I love to CC. It is very true that a skilled enchanter was the most overpowered class in any MMORPG to date. We used to break hate and fear with a single group. That was really intense and fun (especially for the enchanter).

Personally I liked Kunark a lot more than Velious. Lots of GREAT dungeons that required an enchanter (Sebilis, Howling Stones and Karnor's Castle being my favorites). Sebilis had lots of different camps, great loot, fast action, and froglok wizards were great for charming. HS was crazy dangerous and pretty empty. KC was unrest 2.0 with the trains. In classic/Kunark, if you were a good enchanter, people would beg you to join their groups. Also with Kunark came the epic weapon quests, I still remember the moment I made the final turn-in in Burning Woods (although with it came the never ending tells of "shissar speed plz").

Velious started out ok but the high end raid content didn't need crowd control, and in places like ToV nothing could be mezzed. Enchanters turned into buff bots. Planes of Growth and Mischief were the highlights for me.

[Fawqueue]

I think it's also a psychological thing as well as "cool content" based. For many of us, EQ was our first serious MMO (I'd played Dragon Gate and UO, but neither for longer than a few weeks). So likewise, Kunark's release was the first time most of us had ever had our virtual world expand. And it was intoxicating, to suddenly go from the now mundane world of classic EQ to suddenly having this gigantic new place to explore. Nowadays, new content just feels like the next step in the grind. But back then, I honestly wasn't even expecting an expansion pack.

[km2783]

I think it's also a psychological thing as well as "cool content" based. For many of us, EQ was our first serious MMO (I'd played Dragon Gate and UO, but neither for longer than a few weeks). So likewise, Kunark's release was the first time most of us had ever had our virtual world expand. And it was intoxicating, to suddenly go from the now mundane world of classic EQ to suddenly having this gigantic new place to explore. Nowadays, new content just feels like the next step in the grind. But back then, I honestly wasn't even expecting an expansion pack.

I damned near crapped my pants when it started to rain in West Freeport the first time :D And when night time arrived, I was amazed. It had weather and changing periods of night and day :eek:

I thought the trees in Fironia Vie on the way to Lake of Ill Omen were gorgeous.

[mgellan]

For some reason Velious is my favorite expansion, perhaps because I live in the Great White North :) But the zones are amazing, particularly Tower of Frozen Shadow, Crystal Caverns, Kael, Dragon Necropolis. Man, many many hours spent there! I never got high enough to do the high end stuff but I spent most of my time in Velious once it came out...

The run from the dock to Eastern Wastes was awe inspriing, particularly the first time you saw the dragon skull gates to the bridge from Iceclad to EW :) Ruined by spires one expansion later alas :(

Regards,
Gird

[Yellow]

wow you guys have made my day with this post... see this is my first time playing EQ so everythign is enw and i just lvoe the fuckign game... i cannot wait for the expansions now and im quite happily leveling knowing ill still have a solid month or more of classic endgame to look forward to before i get some juiciness :]

[toddfx]

I started a few days after Kunark's release, but I didn't make it there till a couple months later at least. The Overthere was where I spent most of my time, and eventually made it into Frontier Mountains. Soloing those giants with my monk was the first time I felt really powerful.

When Velious came out, it quite honestly scared the crap out of me. I remember riding the boat there and arriving during a blizzard. I started wandering around and was already freaked out by snow wolves and whatever else was roaming around, since you couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of you. Then suddenly a frickin' GIANT emerges from the fog and starts destroying me. Luckily I had a SoW, but I had no clue where I was or where to zone at. Luckily somebody shouted the /loc to me and I ran in panic for like 10 minutes before finding it.

After that incident I was always very timid when venturing into Velious territory. There was always something there that felt unknown to me, even if I had visited many times already.

[Hasbinbad]

What is cool about Kunark: Blood Point
What is cool about Velious: Dark Elf Enchanters in full chainmail

[Tallenn]

I can't wait for Sebilis.

Kunark came out about 4 months after I started playing, so I got to do a considerable amount of leveling there. LOIO, Frontier Mts, CoM, Chardok, Howling Stones.. there really aren't many zones in Kunark that AREN'T awesome.

You often hear Kunark called the best expansion in EQ- I call it the best expansion in ANY game, period.

[Tudana]

I damned near crapped my pants when it started to rain in West Freeport the first time :D And when night time arrived, I was amazed. It had weather and changing periods of night and day :eek:

I thought the trees in Fironia Vie on the way to Lake of Ill Omen were gorgeous.

speeking of how gorgeous things were, I know of atleast 3 EQ weddings that took place near the druid rings in Dreadlands. Oh the tree coloring was AWESOME!

Running through Swamp of No hope and finding that waterfall behind the big pines was breath taking too for me. (also a secret entrance to trakanon through the water way)

[WailinOndem]

Chardok was my home away from Oggok.In the beginning I raided there with my guild till it was on farm status.Then I undertook the insanely long process of reversing my faction till I was max faction with Chardok and able to guide other up and coming guilds through their raids easier by scouting ahead untouched...fun time...and the merchant in there had the longest lasting food and drink in the game for years I would buy for friends so they could save stat foods for raids.My real shaman is parked at the bank in Chardok as his final resting place 3yrs ago

[SerithCantSpell]

There was nothing else to play.

[Loretta]

Hehe Chardok - I both loved & hated that zone due to a number of reasons.

1. A wipe down there due to a overwhelming huge mega sarnak train at the royals could usually be a raid-ender involving summon-corpses, or drag to a spot where we could recover - Either way huge setback.

2. The sheer frustration of raids who couldnt handle the DPS necessary to take down Queen for my warrior epic blade (last piece!) - Eventually got enough manaburn wizzies and enc CC to do it! You really needed to parse your raids dps if you could handle her or risk ending the raid and chance at king/prince drops.

I also got maxed faction with Chardok after finishing my warrior epic - That grind took quite some time, but it was worth it for the foods!!! I thought I got some kind of item from a quest for doing it too, was it the dragon bone sinew shoulder item? I cant remember, but I also remember camping this goblin in Droga that would never spawn and was on a 3-4 day cycle -

Doing the math to figure out his next spawn time and setting my alarm before school to check in the AM hours just to complete that damn quest!!

[Omnimorph]

Hehe Chardok - I both loved & hated that zone due to a number of reasons.

1. A wipe down there due to a overwhelming huge mega sarnak train at the royals could usually be a raid-ender involving summon-corpses, or drag to a spot where we could recover - Either way huge setback.

2. The sheer frustration of raids who couldnt handle the DPS necessary to take down Queen for my warrior epic blade (last piece!) - Eventually got enough manaburn wizzies and enc CC to do it! You really needed to parse your raids dps if you could handle her or risk ending the raid and chance at king/prince drops.

I also got maxed faction with Chardok after finishing my warrior epic - That grind took quite some time, but it was worth it for the foods!!! I thought I got some kind of item from a quest for doing it too, was it the dragon bone sinew shoulder item? I cant remember, but I also remember camping this goblin in Droga that would never spawn and was on a 3-4 day cycle -

Doing the math to figure out his next spawn time and setting my alarm before school to check in the AM hours just to complete that damn quest!!

Chardok was a great zone :)

Spirit wracked cord was the shoulder / arm / wrist piece i think...

And my first impression of chardok was "wait... i just zoned in here... where the hell's the zone line i just crossed??" :p

So many kunark zones took so much time to full explore. Sebilis was a massive maze, with great loot and design. chardok, CoM, Karnor, HS, even dalnir >.<