sounds pretty non classic and therefore shitty.

PoP was the best expansion in EQ. If it could be made usable without the gear inflation holy shitballs would that have been awesome (tuning down gear, AOE's / spells of mobs, level and DPS/mitigation of mobs would be a HUGE feat though).

I disagree. IMO the Bazaar was one of the -worst- features implemented with Luclin. Even AAs, had they been given a cap and not a "who has more time to obtain them", were better than the Bazaar.

Yep! Implementing the Bazaar also equates to drying up the EC tunnel.

Though, what would be interesting would be to somehow make the EC tunnel a "stall" so that players could setup Trader in there. Eh, maybe not.

The Emperor and VT were some of the most fun I've ever had raiding. Figure out a way to get them into your grand scheme.

Look, this is how the game should have went. It shoulda skipped Luclin and gone to PoP which was great. PoK was bad, but entrances to the planes were great. That said, I'd stick to keeping your project classic and only up to Velious.

The problem with Luclin was all of the leveling content that made the old world irrelevant. Paludal caverns single handedly emptied out Crushbone, LOIO, UGuk, Unrest, etc., and that was just the beginning.

The best part about Luclin was Ssra temple, that whole dungeon was a great EXP and raid location, but VT had a harder key grind than VP, and then the trash was a pain and the bosses were easy (Thott's Luclin Uber Content post).

The good thing about Velious and PoP is that they did not rewrite the low-level game. Velious didn't have content for players sub-L35, and PoP did not contain content for players sub-L46. If they could make Luclin not have content for players under L40-50, then it might have worked out better. Also, while the new rings in Luclin were good, VT needs to work on the balance of trash-vs-bosses.

I really hope they don't butcher this wonderful classic game they have by adding in crap from the expansions past Velious. That crap doesn't fit in and was the reason most of us quit the first go around.

I have also seen servers add custom zones and rename, attach them to other zones before. This always ends up to be weird misplaced mismatched zones that doesn't make sense. I hope nothing comes of this thread for the sake of everyone who has been wanting classic trilogy.

They could do alot of stuff after Velious that doesn't damage the wonderful game like custom AAs, tweak classes the way they want, play around with game mechanics, script fun events that don't permanently affect the world.

To give an example of a scripted event, evil and good races would have to collect items (maybe bonechips?) and turn in to launch an attack of giants (dragon?) on an opposing city. This is what I think would be cool.

Another idea would to be after Velious has been been out for quite some time is to restart the server but with a heritage item from your end level character. What if the server restarted but you received a neat item that had nice stats that increased as you leveled and had a clicky. This item also was named for an example Sword of %T. The %T was pulled from you end level characters name.

Only top level characters would receive this no drop on their decedents. This way you have an easier time leveling this time due to the time you put in previously. Just and idea, probably hard to implement. :)

I like your points.

But here's the thing you missed or did not include in your post...

The population during luclin-era was much more top-heavy than it was in 1999. This means more of the players were at the higher levels. So this means, of course, that there would not be enough low level players to form groups in zones, such as: Crushbone, LOIO, UGuk, Unrest, Blackburrow, West Karana, East Karana, Highpass, etc. The population in that range had effectively shrunk. So they made a new race and added low level zones. They bolstered the item rewards and experience to encourage low level players to buy the expansion and play in those zones. This prevented the problem of there being too few low level players to form groups. Later on, a few years later, they added experience bonuses to a dozen or so zones in periodic fashion. This did the same thing that luclin did, but at a much later time. TSS also did this. The tutorial zone is another example. Another benefit this had was that they could update the models, quests, etc, while ignoring the previous expansions. For example, luclin-era models for NPCs were higher-poly than previous expansions. Another example are the quests which used the new quest interface in TSS. Quests in previous expansions still were keyword based. They probably couldn't afford to update all previous expansions, so they focused on the latest expansion.

All of this becomes clearer if you look at mmocharts.com. The estimates on EQ population show that the RATE of incoming players into the game fell consistently every year from 1999 and on. While the population DID increase, it's the rate that tells you how many new players are coming into the game. This is important because without new players it's harder to form groups. And with so many of the existing players being high level and far away, the world felt increasingly empty for a new player and less meaningful. When you factor into this equation the NUMBER of zones, which was always increasing, the population spread became dangerously thin.

You see, they could not leave the game as it was. That was not an option. They had to make a choice that addressed these problems. It was HOW they did it that matters, NOT that they did something. Whether you or others here choose to believe it or not, many of the choices the sony team made WERE appropriate. Were they the MOST appropriate? Well, that depends on your opinion. If it were me, I would have looked ahead and (hopefully) saw this before it happened. I think what I'd do is, with each new expansion, I'd increase player innate damage/mitigation, thusly increasing their power in old content, while at the same time tuning the new expansion to this increased damage/mitigation. What this would effectively do is increase the value of old content by making it easier while retaining the value of the expansion by giving high level players somewhere to go. This would allow players to more easily solo old content and to acquire old items. But the key thing is: it would not increase player power via the latest expansion content. There would have to be other benefits to encourage low level players to buy the expansion that do NOT replace old content and leave it abandoned.

One example of how sony addressed this (and i disagree with) are the boomerang and omm instance missions they added just previous and with the introduction of Underfoot. Essentially, it was far superior to do an omm or a boomerang (uf mission) than it was to actually go out into SOD and adventure. Why? For one, your items and aa's and level had no effect on the omm/boom mission. Second, you didn't even play your own class. Third, you did not lose experience upon death and you only lose a few minutes (at most). Fourth, the omm missions were conveniently placed directly in pok, within sight of the bank. You were encouraged to stay there. Fifth, the money and experience and items sealed the deal. SOD, by comparison, was brutal and painful and empty. Broadly, this pattern has repeated itself for years and years. This is how sony does things. And I am qualified to comment on it because I did the OMM missions for a few months. It's a bittersweet memory. While I liked it for some things, like the ability to play an enchanter for a short while and to play in the older (seemingly more non-linear) zones, these things I state here are resoundingly more important in my mind.

My choice WOULD mudflate things. Old items would become increasingly low value (with each new expansion) because players would be so innately powerful. There would be an over-abundance of old world items. Players would mow down old things. But players would still need items. One way to address this particular issue is to have more no drop items or to have items that are EXPLICITLY changed/rewarded while adventuring. One idea is to have a system where you combine your current weapon with a weapon you looted to get something better. You want SOME items to be bought from other players, but you don't want players to be buying from other players so much that old content becomes meaningless to anybody adventuring in it.

Ideally, old content would change and upgrade itself with time. The best thing I can think of is a zone that dynamically decreases/increases its mob population and item/experience rewards in response to the number of players in the zone. I would also probably decrease rewards if a player is in a place after a set period of time - encourage them to move to a new area. Generally, I'm an anti-camp kind of person. I don't think games should reward players that do the same thing over and over. But this is something I didn't have to put here.

It does not require much thought to figure out why they did what they did. This post here is just a refresher. In fact, mudflation is a trait shared by most, if not all MMORPGs. I've made many posts about this topic here and everywhere. My memory, right now, is not as clear as I'd like it to be. But maybe with some time I will make another post about muflation and how we should go about resolving its problems.