maybe remove or restrict KEI...that really trivialized a lot. That's right, I went there.

"heralded the end of EQ"

I always love when people say this shit. The 15th Anniversary Events just started live last week.

What you mean is the end of EQ that YOU liked. Despite the party line around here, clicky travel doesn't end a game that, to that point, had been expanded 4 times. And has been expanded, what 16 more times since?

Game was awesome at release. Thru Velious. Thru PoP. GoD kind of sucked. But OoW and DoN were awesome. Never been a fan of mercs but played live last fall and games still fun. Just different.

Yep, the end of eq I liked. That's why i'm playing on a kunark only server and not on live or even eq mac when that was still up or the other private servers with more expansions enabled.

PoP was the best expansion of any MMO I have ever played.

Grats. I do too.

But the game didn't end with Velious.

Uh, yeah, I thought that was assumed since I was the one speaking. Do I need to put a 'IMO' in front of everything for you?

I've never understood why being neutral on every possible thing and not admitting to liking or disliking anything has become a virtue. I prefer the game without pok books and where it's not about becoming as op as you possibly can. So why the hell am I not allowed to have an opinion that I think eq WITHOUT pop is better? do you need to be an internet crusader and make sure no one says anything is better than anything else?

I'm a recently returning player to EQ, I played through Velious, and came back shortly in Luclin/PoP.

I came back to EQ because of the "classic" era nature of P1999. There's a couple things EQ does that go beyond many modern MMOs that I've tried and that's the forced player interaction. you have to interact with people to play this game. You have to ask a wizard/druid for a port. You have to speak to people in auction channel instead of there being an auction house. Etc. I definitely think the PoP books helped ruin the game, because it was one more thing they took away from having to make relationships and make people interact with each other.

MMOs are about interacting with other people. Otherwise you're just playing a single player game. This is just one of the things classic EQ does so well. I would be quite sad if the PoP got added into P1999.

As far as the exp penalty goes. I rolled an SK. I'm not that far yet (only 15). At first the penalty was driving me insane, but by now I'm used to it. I don't feel that strongly either way about it being removed in Velious. I would feel a little bad for everyone else who's leveled a hybrid to 60 already if it was removed and hey, if other people could get to 60 pre-removal, then so can I. I'm not going to complain if it's removed though.

Agreed with basically everything you said. I primarily just made this post to play devils advocate anyways. I'm mostly neutral on the exp penalty either way, I just had a thought that after velious this server will be incredibly easy for a lot of reasons.

No, I happen to be a fan of EQ in all forms (mostly) and that's what I have a need to be a crusader about. I started the game in the 3rd week live. Had 90 days played when my toon hit his first birthday in real time. Loved classic. But loved beyond too.

Have your opinion. But the game didn't "end" or "die" or any of the melodramatic shit that gets bandied about here about post-velious. You just didn't like it. And that's fine. I was there and, personally, loved it all thru about PoR, personally.

People site clicky books as " the end" of the game. Really, what happened was we traded mundane shit like boat travel that had its novelty wear off years earlier, and having to buy ports, for exp mobs that didn't just summon, but also flurried and rampaged. For every thing that got easier, something else got more challenging. During PoP era having a slower wasn't a plus, it became required, for example.